Category Archives: travel

August 27, 2012 · 5:45 am

Steamboat Tour — Juneau

Did you know that Juneau has a steamboat tour? If you saw that, what kind of vessel would you expect?

Ursula and I would thinking along the lines of a paddle wheeler. Boy, were we in for a shock. The engine has three cylinders and generates a whopping ten horsepower. The chugging noise that it makes is charming, but I couldn’t help but glance every now and again at the pressure gauge attached to the boiler just feet away from me. And once again we dodged float planes at regular intervals.

Nevertheless, it was an experience I would heartily recommend for everyone. Not only is the crew dressed in period costume, the tour guide was very knowledgeable and imparted a lot of fun historical anecdotes about Juneau and the gold rush days.

Here’s a taste of that tour:

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Filed under Photography, travel

Tagged as Alaska cruise, Juneau, steamboat tour

August 24, 2012 · 12:00 am

Having a Whale of a Time on the Water

I don’t usually blog about cruise legs between destinations. But this leg was rather special. The setting sun played magnificently upon the calm, reflective waters. The beautiful Sea Princess rode beyond our stern, catching the golden rays that filtered between the clouds.

And, oh, yeah . . . I nearly forgot to mention the whales. Humpbacks gave quite a show for nearly half an hour, blowing spray in the distance and occasionally venturing nearby.

Unfortunately, the whales were beyond the useable range of the Canon G1 X lens. I had to resort to my trusty Panasonic ZS6, but the diminishing light meant upping the ISO to where digital noise became all too apparent. That means cropping the images was simply out of the question.

Nevertheless, snapping photographs of whales is still fun to do no matter what the limitations.

Make sure to stop by next week, because this cruise is only just getting started. There’ll be a lot more to see in upcoming installments.

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Filed under Photography, travel

Tagged as Holland America, photography, Statendam, travel, whale watching, whales

August 22, 2012 · 12:00 am

Catch Me When You Can in Ketchikan

First stop on this trip, Ketchikan. Ketchikan, Alaska, is a magical place for photography. Creek Street simply blooms with brightly colored turn of the century wooden buildings casting enchanting reflections from their perches atop spindly logs. Nearly as delightfully colorful and picturesque are the buildings along the harbor that great disembarking cruise passengers in the morning, and that bid them farewell late in the afternoon.

Alas, we decided to do more this trip than just study photographic angles along Creek Street and perform studies in color along the wharf. This time we boarded an amphibious “Duck” for a sightseeing journey that encompassed both land and sea.

Our Duck journey took as past myriad boats of all sizes and types. We also dodged floatplanes jutting stilt-like above their ungainly pontoons.

All in all, it was quite a day. The weather was simply magnificent and, according to the locals, one of the few rain-free days Ketchikan has experienced all this summer.