It’s less than a month until first multi-level cruise ships cast their shadow over downtown Juneau, overpowering with their massiveness most of the waterfront. Their guts will start spewing thousands of tourists onto South Franklin Street, letting them be on dry land just long enough to keep them motivated to spend money in Chinese-made trinket shops along South Franklin or on pre-packaged excursions of a few hours in duration - just long enough to justify the horrendous prices but not long enough to let them appreciate what Juneau is really about.

Just like many other Juneaunites, when I lived in the Valley or out the road, I used to go to downtown once a week or less in the summers. It gets noisy and crowded, tourists walking on roads, as if in Disneyland, cruise ships spewing smoke into the air, which gets trapped between the Juneau and Douglas mountains over the channel. Luckily, I now live just far enough from the waterfront in downtown to be shielded by a 15-minute walk from the passenger docks - just far enough for most tourists not to reach my little neighborhood, tucked away along the channelized Gold Creek.

Let me ramble for another second on the way I differentiate between tourists and travellers.  I greatly enjoy meeting and interacting with travellers - people who plan trips on their own and come on public or mass transportation - be it trains, busses, or, in our case, planes or ferries. They usually don’t rush in, trying to cover a lot of ground over a span of a few days or a week. They take time to learn about places and people. They often come with backpacks and travel guides. They are also often seasoned travellers, who have swallowed the travel bug that now drives them to see and learn still more. Now, tourists, by my definition, are the people who come on pre-packaged tours, often for a week or 10 days. Like animals herds of the Serengeti Plain, they travel in large groups, but instead of migrating by instinct, they are led by travel guides or little brochures to points they must see and trinket shops (often owned by the same cruise ship companies) they must buy from. They, for the most part, end up with shallow, truncated views of places they visit - if being allowed to stay in one place for 6 or 8 hours can really be considered “seeing” it.

When I was in high school, my parents took me on a couple of such “guided” mass trips, and since then I began to despise such travelling. I hope I will feel this way in another twenty years.

However, since moving to downtown and starting to observe tourists incidentally, I became amazed by the plethora of photographic material offered by them. They are brought by floating giants from all over the world and are concentrated on a several-block strip of South Franklin Street. Going there is like going to an human zoo - the tourists offer a gamut of clothing styles, colors, patterns and behaviors. And the gift shops conveniently provide plenty of props to work with - a moving and talking electronic life-size miner with a yellow hard hat sitting on a wooden box, a life-sized plush black bear, an oversized black and white eagle, and a wooden chair in the shape of a bear. And when I walk along South Franklin with a camera with a long telephoto lens, I blend right in - no one even suspects I am there to shoot tourists, not whatever they’re shooting, which I haven’t quite figured out yet. I started working on this captivating project last year and will continue exploring the subject in the coming months.

For more photos of tourists of South Franklin Street, click here. More photos will be added throughout this tourist season!

My idea was to write a cheerful story about the Governor’s Mansion since I live only a few minutes from it and often pass it on the way to downtown. How it turned into a post of gloomy night-time shots of desolate downtown and the governor’s mansion, I don’t know. Perhaps, I shouldn’t have looked at my credit card statement before sitting down to pick the photos for this post. But here it goes anyway, with photos completely out of context.

When Frank Murkowski, our previous governor, occupied the mansion, it looked and felt dead. I could hardly see any sign of life. I suppose the mansion was reflective of its inhabitant. Now that Sarah Palin moved in, a younger governor with teenage children, the place came to life. A trampoline magically appeared in the backyard. Two swings were made for her kids, by suspending fishing buoys from a tree. I even see her once in a while playing with her kids in the backyard. A truly unique feature of my favorite city and the state. It’s also refreshing to meet our governor jogging on trails, by herself, without bodyguards. Yes, Juneau is not big (and we like to keep it that way), but the state still is.

The photo of the governor’s mansion was modified in Photoshop. It actually was quite cheerful when I started playing with it, with bright Christmas decorations, and a mother and a kid standing in front of the mansion, reading a placard. But by the time I was done massing with it, it became almost Hitchcockien. Now, the photo of downtown Juneau, with the background lights of houses on the Blueberry hill on Douglas Island, was not modified at all.

With the halibut and black cod (sablefish) season just opening in Alaska, I decided to post a few photos from my photo archive of the halibut fishery from Dutch Harbor, Alaska from 2005. Halibut can get very large. They are one of the largest bone fishes, not that rarely reaching over 300 pounds. At about 3 to 5 dollars a pound paid to fishermen, such a fish could easily fetch over a thousand dollars. They are commercially fished with a longline - a line stretching up to several miles with baited hooks every foot or so. A buoy is tied to one end of the line, and when the line is set, it floats on the water surface, indicating where the line starts. After soaking for one to several days, the line is retrieved. Once caught, halibut are usually bled right away by having their gills removed. They are put in a fish hold below the main deck and covered with ice, which keeps them fresh for up to several days.

Once delivered, large halibut are offloaded individually by tying a line over their tail peduncle and lifted with a crane. Smaller ones are loaded in brailers (mesh sasks) and brought up from the fish hold in bunches, also with a crane. Several options are available for processing them. They could be packed in large shipping boxes with fresh ice and shipped to markets in the Lower 48, often to Seattle. They are also commonly cleaned, headed and gutted and then sent to fish markets.

I was lucky to meet Charlie - captain of F/V Erika Ann - while photographing Tanner crab processing at the Alaska Glacier Seafoods in Juneau, Alaska. He graciously invited me to accompany him on a two-day golden king crab fishing trip to photograph the fishery in Lynn Canal in Southeast Alaska. As he was leaving in a couple of hours when I met him, I had to rush home across town to get my photo gear ready and pack my Grundens raingear and some layers in a duffel bag. Given that it was February, unpredictable and potentially  cold in Lynn Canal, I had to pack more than usual, not knowing whether the temperature would drop and the wind would pickup overnight.

F/V Erika Ann is a very comfortable 59-foot boat based out of Petersburg, Alaska. Besides Charlie the captain, it had two great crew - Paul and Jon from Petersburg and Wrangell, respectively. Like most pot-fishing boats in Southeast Alaska, F/V Erika Ann uses cone-shaped pots. Fishing vessels crabbing in the Bering Sea are often larger and thus have the space for large square 700-pound pots. Three bait cups, stuffed with chopped herring and pink salmon, are suspended in each cone pot. The pots are light enough that they can be pushed off the landing rail by a single person. The pots are also not “long-lined”, i.e., not tethered together by a line that could stretch for miles. Rather, the whole assemblage consists of a pot attached to a line stretching to the surface, where it is attached to two buoys that float on the surface.

Pots are left to soak for one to several days, long enough to attract king crab and welcome them inside. To retrieve a pot, a three-prong hook is thrown  over the line connecting the two buoys. The buoys are pulled in by hand and the line is put on the hydraulic wheel which pulls the pot up from the bottom. The line is accurately coiled, and often put in a tub. Once the pot is at the surface, it is hooked by a hook from the crane and moved on the landing square rail on deck. The bottom of the cone pot is then opened, and crab fall into a tub. Once on deck, crab are sorted and all females and sub-legal males (smaller than 16.5 inches wide, I believe) are tossed back to live and love. The keepers are put through a chute into a holding tank underneath the deck, which is filled with circulating sea water that keeps them alive and well.

Usually, when crab is delivered live to processing plants, they are cooked and frozen. However, F/V Erika Ann was fishing for a niche market that delivered fresh live crab to markets and restaurants down south, primarily in Seattle. Once back at the dock, crab was quickly offloaded into large square boxes lined with ice packs, and flown to Seattle. Once at their final destination, they were “revitalized” by being submerged in cold sea water, and then sold live.

Too see more of my favorite photos from this trip, CLICK HERE.

Mechanical Marvels was the theme of this year’s event, although only a couple of artists took up the challenge. Teresa Busch, winner of previous Wearable Art shows, spent countless hours devising a dress that was to be worn by a model on stage but that was going to drive off stage on its own. “Out of Control” had a hidden radio-controlled car under the dress. The idea was for the hidden car to drive the dress off stage after it was taken off by the model in the middle of the runway. “Metal Fusion” created and modeled by Colena McDougal was another great desgin with large flappable wings made out of aluminum, copper, leather and many other materials.

All together, there were 24 designs by artists from a number of towns in Southeast Alaska, with a number of themes, ideas, materials. Coffee was another, though unofficial, but predominant theme this year with two designs - “Brownies and Coffee” and “Bonnie on the Ritz” - showcasing coffee bags, coffee beans, coffee filters, and coffee-related accoutrements. Two of my personal favorite costumes, designed by Rhoda Walker and modeled by Barbara Kuterbach and Lorraine Langston, were “Mechanical Toys, Past and Future”, consisting of “neck ties, cardboard, female baboon costume with lighted banaba”.

From the caption I wrote for the cover photo of a local newspaper:

The two-day Wearable Art - Mechanical Marvels was a smashing success, with 24 models showcasing a variety of artistic creations this past weekend. Provocative, imaginative, innovative and colorful, everything was to be seen at the event… On both days, first place went to “The Queen of the Sea”, created and modeled by Joanie Waller, with second place going to the “Puzzling Affect”, created and modeled by Temple Schneeberger. Third place was shared by the “Urban Alternative” on Saturday, created by Ricky Tagaban and modeled by Diandrea Mack and Lindsey Forrest and “All Bust Up” on Sunday, created and modeled by Hanna Davis.

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The room walls were painted in light blue, which was also the color of the window drapes. This gave me a nice background to work with. I put together a couple of light stands with tungsten bulbs to contrast nicely with the cooler background, and set everything up by a window. The sunshine streaming through the blue curtain of the window provided a well-illuminated background, which thus didn’t require a separate illumination.

Father Michael Spainhoward gratefully invited me to his church to photograph the upcoming Holy Theophany on January 18th and 19th. For those of you - like me - who don’t know what it is, here’s an excerpt from wikipedia.org: “from the Greek, theo (God), and phainein (to show forth), theophany means an appearance of a God to man, or a divine disclosure. The Feast of Theophany in the Eastern Orthodox Church on 6 January (which is 19 January in the Gregorian Calendar when the particular church uses the Julian Calendar) celebrates the theophany at the Baptism of Jesus. Eastern Christians commemorate the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan River, his manifestation as the Son of God to the world”.

Not being Christian or religious, I was a bit anxious walking to the church that morning. As I entered the church, I was enveloped by the smells of burning incense and the warmth of candle and tungsten lights mixing in with the bright sun shining through the windows. Everyone there was very welcoming, and put me at ease at once. Ceremonies in Russian orthodox churches are traditionally done standing up, and a couple of benches along the walls  of St. Nicholas were reserved only for older people and young kids. The theophany ceremony was held on the eve of the holiday on the 18th and the following day, on the 19th. On the eve, the priest and the deacon wore golden robes, while the following day, they had red robes for the services. Much of the services were sung by the priest, the deacon and the reader, with some participation by attendants, and sung very beautifully. I was often finding myself too absorbed in the ceremony, standing idly and listening, and forgetting the reason I was there in the first place.

Unfortunately, in terms of my main objective, I was having a hard time seeing and capturing interesting photos, and not for the lack of beautiful colors or visually-rich ceremonies.  Because the space was so small and I didn’t want to disturb my gracious hosts too much, and it was too dark to shoot at anything but the widest lens opening (f/2.8 in my case), I was not getting the depth-of-field I wanted or fast-enough shutter speeds to stop the motion blur. In the end, I was not very pleased with the photos I got. I will continue trying, however, and my future attempts should result in more interesting images.

The sun was lazily rising up, trying to break though a grey cloud cover. I got to one of their hang-out locations where a number of younger ravens were making a commotion on the ground. Perfect! Standing across the street, I pulled out my camera. As if a gun went off, the ravens scattered in an instance. Some flew up into tree branches and on building roofs, just far enough to become black dots in the viewfinder. I patiently waited for them to resume their business, remaining motionless as far as the chilly weather allowed, but to no avail. The birds curiously looked down on me, from the heights of their perches, vocalizing and changing positions, but remaining unreachable by my lens.

After an hour of trying, I went for a cup of mocha and a muffin at the Valentine’s cafe. Their cranberry muffins looked especially good, so I bought a second one in case the ravens would share my taste in pastries. For $2.50 a muffin, one muffin was all they were getting. When I threw pieces of it on the ground, a black cloud of ravens descended  at once. It worked! I was about to raise my camera, when the black cloud was overcome and displaced by a molted-white cloud of gulls. The gulls swallowed every single piece of the muffin at once, and proceeded to leave me without a doubt that they wanted more. They were very demanding, following me at an arms-reach, like a flock of ducklets. The ravens flew back to their perches and silently watched from above.

The next day, I went to a local supermarket and bought several one-dollar muffins. The gulls weren’t there, so I threw pieces of muffins on the ground. A couple of ravens made a low-flying pass over the muffins but decided against landing. The rest of them remained motionless on trees and roofs. Apparently, a generic breed of muffins from a local grocery store was not up to their standard. Only when I hid around the corner of a building did they land for a tasting, and at my first appearance quickly scattered, refusing to land again, no matter how far I walked away. I was against a worthy opponent!

***

It’s been several weeks and many a number of tries to get interesting, captivating photos of the raven. I am slowly figuring out how to get their photos with my shorter telephoto, but for one, I have just received a new telephoto lens - 160 to 640mm (35-mm equivalent). That should certainly help me get shots of the older birds, who are too cautious to come close. And I’ve learned a few tricks that help me get the shot I want - it seems, for the most part, being mostly about hiding my camera while taking photos.

I will be adding more photos of ravens to the  album Tame and Wild over the next several weeks.

I’ve been snow-shoeing with a friend around the Eaglecrest Mountain - Mount Ben Steward ridge area, over on Douglas in Juneau, Alaska. It’s interesting being on a mountain in the winter without skis, not being able to whoosh down fast at will. But this mode of transportation has its advantages - I can go up slowly and stop often to enjoy the scenery and the night and early-morning sky. Without the skis, I don’t feel hurried to get to the top quickly and ski down while there is still plenty of virgin powder.

It’s intriguing how easy it is to strike up conversations with skiers on the slope while snow-shoeing. Some wonder why we are going in the opposite direction of the general traffic, why we are not on the chair-lift, where our skis are. Ski patrol stops to see if we are alright. And so on. When I ski, I usually end up talking only during the chair-lift ride, or in the line to it. Otherwise, I prefer it to be a rather solitary experience, to get down to earth, so to speak, at least as far as the snow depth allows.

But I digress. After snow-showing up to the top,  with kind assistance of poles or an ice axe, there is nothing better than a hot cup of tea or cocoa, courtesy of the Whisper-Lite stove we take with us. But before we can get a pot of snow going, first things first. We dig in, until a circular trench in the snow is made, tall enough to hide us from wind and wide enough for us and the stove. Now, while the snow is undergoing all three physical form-changes to accommodate us with a hot drink, we pull out bars of dark chocolate and munch on them for lunch. It’s quite and tranquil around. No people, no sounds, just the breeze singing in the trees as it travels from Canada or the ocean, navigating through channels and mountain-tops. That’s ecstasy, 6th heaven.

As the sun slowly rolls over the peaks of the Admiralty Island, threatening to disappear in between one of them, we pack up and begin our journey down. A slow descent, as our legs are tired, but still so much faster than the climb up. With the last rays of sun igniting mountain-tops for the last time and long grotesque shadows bridging trees, we reach the car.

The website look will change to a light grey color base, as opposed to the dominating black color. Splashes of color will highlight new features and new and time-sensitive content.

And all of this is possible thanks to free open-source web apps. The three main ones powering  this website are Joomla, which is the framework of this site, Gallery 2, which powers the photo galleries, and WordPress - one of the best blogging tools that I will use for the news and photo stories section.

If you’d like to let me know what you like and dislike about the new site design, feel free to leave a comment below.