Some more panoramas from Alaska. I loved all the fireweed that seems to grow everywhere. I was told that when it stops flowering it means six weeks to winter. Such beauty. Want to go back to see the big mountain ranges, which were covered in clouds the whole time for me...
The trip down to the coast led me to Seward, one of Alaska's main ports and fishing villages. I photographed a guy named Alex who works there seasonally in the summers. The town was really cool, although expensive, like most of Alaska. Here are a few shots from there, including the marina, the shops from a dock, the alehouse (a boy's gotta drink...), and the sun setting over some local homes. Really picturesque.
Here's a panoramic of the Knik Glacier outside of Palmer, AK which I visited on the trip. The owner of the tour guide company, Tom, contacted me about participating in the project, whom I gladly included. Will post more pics of the excursion soon. The weather could have been a little better, but such is life.
Man, Whitefish is a cool little town. Amazing mountain range surrounding a 7 mile lake with a great ski area a few miles up the road. Glacier Park a short drive away. Great western covered sidewalk downtown. This is what Greg and Jon look out onto from their rental house on the lake. Click on it to see it bigger. You can see the ski trails up on the mountain. They are building a new home on ten acres up in the hills in a beautiful private setting now. Maybe we come in for a couple of days of skiing this winter. Would be nice to see in the snow.
Last Thursday I took a walk around the Pool in Central Park near the apartment for the first time in months. My recovering knee and the fact that I don't have a dog anymore are to blame. I really miss the early morning and evening walks that used to be a daily part of my life. But I am reluctant to get another dog until my life and work sort themselves out a bit. Anyway, here is a shot from the magical bridge at the end of the lake that spills over a waterfall before making it's way through the Loch and into the Harlem Meer. So beautiful.
I sit in Santa Fe this morning awaiting a workshop next week and was going through some recent personal pics and found some stuff from the new red stepped TKTS store in Times Square that are cool. I really do love this architectural structure/folly. It gives you such a great place to just chill and take in the great people watching and all the signage. It is made up of 27 steps and rises 16 feet high, housing the store underneath. Great interesting example of form following function. Perkins Eastman designed it based on a competition-winning concept by architects John Choi and Tai Ropiha. It opened in October and really has transformed the space. It will also be interesting to see how this is affected by Bloomberg's plan to turn this part of Broadway pedestrian-only in May. Times Square will basically become an urban park. Cool.
Here are some shots from the two beautiful places where I spend most of my time when not in the city. The VT mountaintop shot looks southeast down the back side of Jay Peak and takes in the view of Big Jay and Stowe way off in the distance. Our house sits just to the right of the low lying cloud and mountain to the right, Big Jay, about three miles from the ski area entrance. I took this last Saturday during a great day of skiing and boy, it was cold, about 5˚F. The sunrise shot I woke up to in Mastic Beach the morning I left for VT a week earlier and looks out over Narrows Bay to Fire Island from across the street to our beach place on Long Island. Lucky man indeed.
As I prepare for the next trip for my project, I wanted to post a little something about the last journey, which started and ended in Milwaukee, but brought me to Des Moines IA, Omaha NE, Kansas City MO, Wichita KS, Tulsa OK, Little Rock AR, Jackson TN and finally Farmersville IL. One spot that really left me breathless was along a drive in Eastern Kansas through these amazingly large rounded grass covered hills known as the Flint Hills or Bluestem Pastures. As the sun was setting and the views from the highway amazing, I stopped quickly to try and capture the American heartland at its best, cows grazing and all. The resulting image is just OK, but you get the idea. I also turned around and took a shot of a truck whizzing by me on the highway, with the moon in the distance. Sweet. Interesting side note, Elton John apparently has purchased a lot of land in this area, at least according to the woman at the Kansas Welcome Center.
