Now that some time has passed, and I’ve had the opportunity to work through most of my Alaska film, it’s time to write about the photography experience of the trip. Where the last post (read it here) was all about the adventure, this one will focus more on the logistics and challenges of photographing up there - especially on large format film. I’m also going to use this article as a chance to share a significant number of images from the trip, all taken on 4x5” film. Most will be from Alaska, but a few are from the travels through Canada. You’ll see that many of these images are of colorful autumn foliage, but I’m considering it a “summer” of photography because it was hot and green when I got back home in early October.
What to expect in Alaska
Long Days: Arriving up there at the beginning of August, the days were still plenty long. Depending on the latitude (and just a few hundred miles north or south makes a huge difference!), you could be looking at sunsets near 10 to 11pm, a short night of twilight, and the sun coming back up around 4am. I never did go north of the Arctic Circle, as it was no problem being sleep deprived further south! The days get shorter very quickly towards the end of August, and become the same as anywhere else in the world by the equinox. At some point, it was necessary to realize that I wouldn’t be photographing both sunrise and sunset every day. I made some attempts at it, but a midday nap was necessary. However, it was more up to the weather than to me which brings me to my second point…
“Autumn Mist Sunset” - Kodak E100 4x5, 200mm lens, 1 second at f32, 1 stop soft GND filter and 812 warming filter. Even in late August, sunset was around 9:30pm in Denali National Park. Prints available
A LOT of Cloudy Weather: August is generally Alaska’s rainy season. Had I arrived in June there would have been a better likelihood of clear-sky days, but by August clouds cover much of the state rather frequently. August of 2022 was also an abnormally rainy one, after the summer had started out unusually dry. This doesn’t mean that all day every day is overcast, but some part of almost every day was. Often the clouds will break up a bit around midday, with a slightly possible chance of being enough clearing in the sky for a pleasant sunset. At some point overnight, clouds would often work their way back in and remove any chance of a colorful sunrise. This seemed especially true in the southern portion of the state, below the Alaska Range.
I would often set an alarm for a potential sunrise, and then hear rain pattering away on the roof of the van. In desperate need of more sleep, I would pass right back out and sleep in until mid morning. A complete departure from my normal morning person schedule!
“Kenai Fern” - Kodak E100 4x5, 125mm lens, 6 seconds at f32, no filters. Cloudy days were a great time to work with the smaller details of the landscape. Prints available.
Rain! If you can’t prepare for and be comfortable in rain, then you won’t have a good time in Alaska. You will want a high quality rain coat and pants, as well as fully waterproof boots. Just like the cloudiness, it didn’t really downpour all the time and the total rain accumulation wasn’t very intense. But it rained at some point most days, from a sprinkle to a steady rain, and everything was always wet. In places like Denali National Park, where there are no trails, I had to put on the full rain suit anytime I left the tent or the road. Even if it wasn’t currently raining, the dense bush was soaked from dew or rain and could drench your clothing in just a few steps.
“You don’t get rainbows without rain!” - Quote from some jerk who lives in a dry climate.
“Denali Rainbow” - Ektar 100 4x5, 200mm lens, 1/2 second at f32, no filters. Prints available.
This also means you need to figure out how to photograph in the rain. I had to really discipline myself to not leave my camera bag open the way I normally do when setting up. Grab the piece of gear I need, close the bag up, and put the rain cover over it. Rain doesn’t really hurt large format gear, but once the bag gets damp it becomes a serious struggle to avoid fog on the lenses, filters, and other constantly wet gear. As far as the camera goes, I would cover the lens with my flexible “flare buster” and drape the darkcloth over the camera. My darkcloth is a cheap synthetic one, which keeps water off for a little while and dries fairly quickly, but it is by no means water resistant. A waterproof darkcloth or a spare rain jacket would have been handy on this trip, just to keep the camera a bit more dry. Once the bellows get wet, it’s back to the same fog problem as the bag. Additionally, the fresnel lens on the ground glass needs to be kept as dry as possible. If water works its way into those tiny circular grooves, you’ll have to take it apart to dry it out. The humidity was also quite high and the temperatures rather cool, so nothing ever dries out. I did use the defrost in the van a few times to dry lenses on the dashboard, and I would often use moments of sun to set out camera gear to dry while backpacking.
Embrace Midday Light: With the way the cloudiness seems to work in Alaska, the best chance for sunlight seemed to be from late morning to mid afternoon. This is the time of day we’re usually told to not bother with photography, but it was often all you’d ever get in Alaska. Being so far north, the angle of the sun is a good bit lower even at noon so the light was more dynamic than midday at southern latitudes. Clouds could create dappled light on the mountains, and sunlight really seemed to bring out the blue colors in glacial ice. It’s worth using a film like Ektar or E100 that can handle the high contrast of midday light to do what you can during the day. You may even get a lot of rainbows during this part of the day, where passing storms mix with beams of sunlight.
“Sanford Reflections” - Velvia 50 4x5, 200mm lens, 1/4 second at f32, polarizing filter. One of my favorite images from the trip was taken around 10am, hours after sunrise. It took that long for the clouds to finally part, but the angle of sun was still dynamic and the contrast was perfect. Prints available.
Sunset and twilight last forever: If you are lucky enough to get a day with a nice sunrise or sunset, you’ll find you have so much time to photograph the golden hour light. The sun can be at a low angle for a couple of hours before sunset, giving you time to work different compositions as it grazes along the horizon. And once twilight starts, you can have an hour or more before it gets too dark to photograph. It takes some time to wrap your head around the sun angles at these latitudes.
“Finn Twilight” - E100 4x5, 125mm lens, 1 minute at f22, 812 filter. Long after sunset, twilight kept creating a lovely glow on the landscape. Wrangell St Elias National Park. Prints available.
BIG, messy landscapes: Be prepared for scenery that is so grand and so overwhelming that it gets a bit confusing to photograph at times. This is particularly the case in lower elevations where you’ll encounter forests that can block views, or in large glacial valleys jumbled with rocks and ice where a subject can be hard to come up with. The scale of the landscape is hard to describe, but it’s truly vast. Mountains will often be dozens of miles away, lakes that look small and close may be far and huge. Give yourself time to adjust to each new type of terrain, and don’t forget to look at the textures at your feet. Grasses, moss, autumn colors and rocks can all be interesting so just soak in the scenery for a while.
At some angles, glacial landscapes will always look crooked too. The glaciers cut a horizontal line across the mountain that is quite obvious to the eye, but it slopes at a slight angle since these rivers of ice are flowing slowly downhill. If you’re shooting across a valley it can be hard to choose how to level the image, both true level and level with the angled cut can look a bit odd in the final image.
“Blackburn Dawn” - Ektar 100 4x5, 200mm lens, 8 seconds at f22, 1 stop soft GND filter. Jumbled, dirt-covered ice, a blue glacier, towering peaks. This landscape is chaotic and massive and can be a challenge to find clean compositions in! Wrangell St Elias National Park. Prints Available.
Photography Gear I Packed
Essentially I just packed my normal kit of photo gear, with a few spares just in case. My day hiking bag holds the 4x5, 5 lenses (75mm up to 300mm), filter kit, and a bunch of film holders. In the van I had a 500mm lens that I used occasionally, an extra tripod, as well as a backup 4x5 camera, a spare ground glass, and small screwdrivers to replace the ground glass or tighten any loose screws on the camera. Always carry tools for your tripod as well, those legs loosen up at the worst times. And don’t forget the gaff tape! If there’s something extra you can think of related to your kit that is easy to bring, take it along. It’s going to be hard to find spares up there, but you can always have things shipped to a FedEx location in the cities. For me, the extra gear I packed included things like loupes, a spare light meter camera, etc. Of course I also had a film changing bag so I could load film in the van or in the backcountry.
“Tussocks” - Velvia 50 4x5, 125mm lens, 6 seconds at f32, no filters. Wrangell St Elias National park. I like to use lenses that are close to a standard focal length for subjects on the ground near my feet. Prints available.
When photographing from the roadside or shorter day hikes, I use a camera bag that holds all of my lenses and a ton of film holders. This is a backpack that opens up quickly and allows for easy camera access, but it doesn’t work all that well for backpacking. It’s a good idea to carry a few different camera bag inserts (the foam divider cases) so that you have options of packing differently and can use them in a traditional backpacking bag.
Which lenses were useful in Alaska? When it comes to backpacking, I need to pare down some of the kit. Usually I take just three lenses, and for Colorado mountains that ends up being the 75mm, 125mm, and 200mm. In Alaska, even though the mountains can be incredibly tall, it became apparent quickly that things are often much further away. The 75mm lens was rather useless in my opinion, and a little more reach than 200mm could open up some interesting compositions. For the Denali backcountry trip, I made the decision to carry a fourth lens, opting for the 90mm, 125mm, 200mm, and 300mm. In the end, all of them ended up being used during that week, but the 90mm was only used two times and is the largest of the lenses. If you find yourself in a situation where you want to reduce weight, it would be reasonable to consider leaving behind the ultra wide lenses for many parts of the state. The most used lenses in general on the entire trip were my 125mm, 200mm, and 300mm but I did use every lens that I brought. For full frame digital shooters that’s roughly an equivalent of 40mm, 65mm, and 100mm.
“Denali Lakes” - Ektar 100 4x5, 90mm lens, 1/15th second at f22, no filters. One of the rare times I used a wide lens in Denali National Park, with the goal being to crop to panorama. Prints available.
Polarizing filter - I’m generally not a huge fan of these filters, and use them very rarely for wet foliage or waterfalls. However, in Alaska the subjects were often far away and a bit of polarization helped cut down the blue haze in the mountains. The difference was most notable in the layer of mountain just below the snow, where there should be a lot of autumn colors but the distance of 20 or more miles made it appear too blue. Since I frequently used longer lenses, there was no concern about the dreaded polarizer wedge in the sky either. I still didn’t use this filter all too often, but I kept it in mind for scenes where the mountains looked like they were missing some oomph to my eyes.
“Glacial Layers” - E100 4x5, 500mm lens, 1/15th at f22, polarizing filter. Chugach Range. A polarizer really helped bring out the colors of autumn foliage in the distance for this image. Prints available.
Film
Ahead of this trip I had to decide how much film to bring, and how to store it. From past trips, I know that I can shoot ten or even more sheets per day if things are really good, but I also assumed that there would be a good number of road days and in-town days where I shoot just a couple sheets or none at all. I came up with the idea of bringing 8 sheets per day, or a bit over 600 sheets. Oddly enough, that’s exactly how much I ended up shooting! Throw in a little extra for safety, and I ended up having maybe around 750 sheets with me.
“Denali Morning” - E100 4x5, 200mm lens, 1/8th second at f22, 812 filter. E100 was a perfect slide film for big Alaska scenes. I enjoyed it’s ability to handle extreme highlights with sunlit snow along with its cool, almost cyan rendering of distant shade and texture. It seems to have just a touch of that old Kodachrome feel. Prints available.
The mix: I brought about 260 sheets of E100 and 260 of Ektar, and I ended up using every last one of both. I had some Velvia 50 and Provia and maybe shot 30 to 40 sheets of each. And then some Portra 160 for good measure, which was mostly used on the prairie during my journey north. I opted for the most flexible films possible like Ektar and E100, because I knew there would be deep valleys that often have a crazy range of contrast. These films do a great job with a wide variety of situations.
“Wokkpash Sunset” - Ektar 100 4x5, 125mm lens, 2 seconds at f32, 2 stop soft GND filter. You’ll notice that most of the images from this trip were shot on Ektar or E100, two very versatile film types from Kodak than can deal with the wide range of contrast in such deep canyons. British Columbia, Canada. Prints available.
Packing the film: For some reason, Kodak only puts 10 sheets of film in every box. 70 some boxes of film take up a lot of space and I have a very small van. So I took apart the boxes and crammed 40 sheets in each. This fits just fine, if you remove the sheets from the paper bag and just put all 40 sheets between the two sheets of included cardboard. This was also useful for backpacking portions of the trip, so I could have a lot of film in a very small space. However, I’m not quite sure I recommend putting 40 sheets in a box. In the future I may keep it down to 30. With so many sheets, that means a lot of times that you’ll be opening up the box in the dark, increasing the number of times that dust comes in and my grubby blueberry-juice mountain-man hands come in contact with the film. I also had a bit of a scratching issue on some of the Ektar during the Denali trip, so particles must have gotten into the box. I think that biking with the film causes more vibrations than hiking, and the Denali trip included nearly 100 miles of biking on a dirt road. 40 might be just a bit overloaded, but it’s really needed to put more than just ten sheets in a box.
“Atlin Dawn” - Ektar 100 4x5, 90mm lens, 12 seconds at f32, 4 stop ND and 1 stop soft GND filters. British Columbia, Canada. Prints available.
Storing the film: I had a surprising number of people asking me how I store the film on a long road trip. There seems to be a wild misconception about how sensitive film is to heat, as if it will self-destruct outside of the refrigerator in a week. The first three weeks of the trip were quite hot (daytime temps into the high 90s F), but think of what happens to your film inside the FedEx truck when you order it in June. I just had all the film in a tote that was under the bed. That area stays cooler than the rest of the van, but it is by no means refrigerated. As I got further north, there were no more extreme temps at all, and the season gradually got cooler. Film will be just fine if it gets warm, there’s no need to fret about a few hot weeks on the road. Keep it off the dashboard and out of the sun and you’ll be good.
“Portage Glacier” - Ektar 100 4x5, 200mm lens, 12 seconds at f22, 1 stop soft GND filter. Prints available.
How I Planned my Shoots
Locations - There’s no denying that the amount of land I would be covering on this trip would be truly massive. In less than three months it would be impossible to see everything, that amount of terrain would take a lifetime to explore. So it’s important to cut down some of the options and to hone in on a few priorities. That said, I’m not the type of person who likes to plan out a detailed itinerary especially when it’s somewhere new. I prefer to leave options open, which does come at the risk of some potential indecision while in the field. For a trip like this I start by perusing the internet to find some regions of interest, and then I ignore the places that have way too many articles about them because I have no desire to be mired in a swamp of tourists. I purchased a topo map (the big book one by DeLorme that covers a state in a hundred or so pages). I also use Gaia GPS to research locations on topo and satellite, which by the way is a patchwork of absolutely useless imagery for most of the far northern latitudes. On Google Maps I will make dozens of pins for potentially interesting places, and will do the same on Gaia for hikes and possible off-trail routes I may want to take. These locations don’t become a list of everything that I plan to see, but it’s more of an idea of areas that may work if I have the time.
An example of what my Google Maps looked like, showing just some of the spots since it will show others at different zoom levels. I’m generally always adding pins around the world for potential future trips.
What I’m mostly looking for is terrain that may be accessible, within reasonable distance from a road or trail, and with mountains that look good on a topo map or an interesting lake or glacier. I’m also taking into account that the sun rises and sets rather far to the north in the summer at these latitudes, so if you can find views looking to the south (such as a tall mountain) it has a good chance of getting nice light both in the morning and evening. Planning locations where all the views are mostly to the north can be a little more tricky, since the sun will be setting behind the mountains. An app like PhotoPills is helpful to get an idea of sunrise and sunset angles at these far northern latitudes. I started this planning process in the spring, and would just spend some time a few days a week looking over maps, scouring the internet, and pinning locations of interest.
“St Elias Dawn” - Ektar 100 4x5, 90mm lens, 5 seconds at f22, no filters. Kluane National Park, Yukon. One of the regions I had tagged along the journey. Prints available.
As the trip got closer, I started to plot things out loosely on a calendar which was only partially useful. I really only planned out the first few weeks where there would be the most driving, so I could get an idea of how long it would really take to get up there at a relaxed pace, driving no more than 6 hours or a few hundred miles per day. Looking at all the places I had researched in the previous months, it was easy to string together a road trip that would give me shooting locations as well as a few one-night backpacking trips. This gave me some sort of schedule so that I didn’t dawdle too long, and it brought me to Alaska in roughly three weeks as planned.
A friend would be meeting me for a few weeks, and for this portion it was important to have a real plan. The highlight would be an 8 day trip into Denali, where we arranged flights with a small air company a few months ahead of time to get past the damaged section of the park road so we could ride our bikes around an empty national park and have free rein over some of the best backpacking permit zones. Together my friend and I picked out spots of interest on the map in the weeks leading up to the trip and also discussed options with the park rangers the morning we picked up our permits.
“Denali Fog” - Ektar 100, 125mm lens, 2 seconds at f22, no filters. Prints available.
Timing - It was important to not be rushed all the time. The weather is going to make the rules, and the state’s tallest peaks will happily hide in the clouds for days on end. Allowing some time to wait out weather was critical. It’s also wise to be flexible and choose other subjects that might work best in gloomy weather, and if the weather is forecast to be lousy for a while it may be ok to just move onto another region depending on your patience levels. I would usually allow myself a few days or longer in each area, waiting out weather by taking walks, riding my bike, or just hanging out in the van. It’s good to take some of these days to break from photography, so that I wasn’t just constantly feeling that I had to be productive which can lead to burnout.
As far as the general trip timing, the goal was to arrive while there was still some summer left and to really get a lot of fall shooting in. Autumn starts early in Alaska, showing signs of the changing season in mid-August around the Alaska Range and going full-on technicolor by the end of the month. It seems to last pretty well, with a variety of colors from gold to deep red and purple in the bushes. Further south and at lower elevations you’ll find various deciduous trees and aspen that turn lovely yellows, and you can continue shooting fall through much of September. You don’t necessarily have to travel all across the state to make the most out of autumn, you can go up and down in elevation or just try another nearby region to see a completely different set of colors.
Weather - Even after several weeks up there, I wasn’t really quite sure if it was actually worth planning shoots around the weather. In Colorado, it’s not uncommon for me to have a couple of options planned out in two different mountain ranges to then choose the one with the most interesting weather at the last moment. In Alaska, that mostly seemed futile. Weather forecasts were unreliable at best. At any time you could count on maybe some clouds, maybe some sun, and probably a decent chance of rain or other precipitation. The forecast for the coming days would always change wildly with each update, and trying to make choices on such poor information could leave you mentally paralyzed. On top of that, huge portions of the state don’t have any sort of cell service so it’s not like you’re going to be able to get any weather forecasts anyway. It seemed to make the most sense to just prepare for any weather and head for the location that speaks to your heart. For one deep backcountry trip where my friend was meeting me, we decided not to hike into the Alaska Range after seeing that the entire week forecast would just be heavy rain with some snow. Instead we went hundreds of miles south to Wrangell St Elias where the weather was supposed to have chances of sun and that ended up being an excellent choice. So sure, check the forecast, but keep in mind that it isn’t always very helpful.
“Nizina Valley” - Ektar 100 4x5, 125mm lens, 1/15th at f22, no filters. A last minute change due to weather brought us to some rather lovely days in Wrangell St Elias National Park. Prints available.
I will say that most weather in the summer and fall seemed to come from the south, streaming in from the Gulf of Alaska. This is a bit of a change from the lower 48 where most fronts approach roughly from the west. So if you’re looking at storms or a patch of clear sky to the south, keep in mind that it may be over your head shortly.
What Did and Didn’t Work
Overall, the trip to me felt like an outstanding success. It was the longest I’d been away from home, but the pace of the adventure kept me feeling comfortable and mentally powered up. I was able to see so much of the north, and even had some specific adventures that went well like the 8 day trip into Denali. The overall planning of supplies like film and any needed camera or backcountry equipment was perfect, the years of experience both shooting 4x5 and traveling in wilderness environments paid off.
“Klondike Gold” - Ektar 100 4x5, 125mm lens, 1/2 second at f22, 2 stop soft GND filter. Yukon Territory. Prints available.
A few things that could have been better: A little more advance planning could have helped narrow down options when it came to locations, but I’m still happy with the freedom I had to choose destinations while up there. There was one territorial park in Yukon that I would have liked to see, but permits sell out in January and I was just dreaming up this trip at that point. Honestly, even more time would have also been useful for such a trip. I never did make it all the way to the arctic and there were a few more roads that would have been nice to travel down. It’s almost too much to take in during only one summer, and return visits are likely to happen. As far as photography specifically, I would have liked to have been more productive during the long rainy stretches. Large format gear gets challenging to use in the rain, but a little more waterproof protection for the camera and lenses could have kept me going more during those weeks of wet weather.
That wraps up my experience of shooting large format film for nearly 3 months on the road up north. I hope this shows how much goes into a trip like this and gives you an idea of what such a journey is like from a photography standpoint. Look below for a gallery of additional image that didn’t fit in the text of this post.
Thank you for reading! Have a favorite image or any questions about the trip? Leave a comment below!