Glaciers and Waterfalls
Our final day in Alaska. We took a day cruise out of Whittier on Prince William Sound. It was the most sunny day of our trip! You might think that is good, but it is most certainly not good for photography. The sun was far too harsh. I was hoping for an overcast day on this last day, but it was not to be. Bummer.
Whittier is waterfall madness. My wife figured I was in heaven with all the waterfalls coming off the mountains. I would have been, perhaps, if the weather co-operated, and if I had a kayak (and the time) to explore them. I found it quite difficult to shoot these waterfalls. They are all glacier waterfalls. Falling off the mountains from melting glaciers. In the grand scheme of geological things, they have a very short lifespan. One hundred years ago, most of them probably did not exist, and 100 years from now when the glaciers are melted, they will cease to exist. But for now, in our lifetime, they do exist. We saw tons of waterfalls on this cruise. Many of them are significant waterfalls and worthy to put on my website. But it is impossible to document these waterfalls properly (unless, perhaps like I said, I had a kayak and much more time to do so). All I could really do is document and photograph the major waterfalls on the major glaciers.
The most spectacular waterfall we saw was this one (Northland Falls) coming off Northland Glacier. It is about 500 ft. high. It is really difficult to get a perspective on the size of this waterfall. The glaciers and the landscape here is just so huge. We weren’t really up close to the glacier (or falls), but yet it looked so huge.
The photo was a hand-held HDR shot. It is impossible to use a tripod on a moving, bobbing, boat. And with the sun being so harsh, I knew there was too much dynamic range to take a single shot. So I tried to do a hand-held HDR with 3 exposures (0EV, -2EV, +2EV). Most of the shots I took like this did not turn out too well, but a few turned out ok. I wish I had better light to work with, but what can you do.
Northland Falls was located at one of the main glaciers where the boat was stopping, so I did have a bit of time to take the shot. Most of the waterfalls we saw, the boat just whizzed right by them. No time to stop. No time to shoot. The one exception was a waterfall they called Hidden Falls, a nice but smallish waterfall we stopped at so EVERYONE on the boat could get out on deck and get their picture taken in front of the falls. It was a zoo on the deck. I had the strong feeling that the cruise line just picked out Hidden Falls at random from all the waterfalls along the way as being the one they would stop at on the cruise all the time for everyone to get out on deck and see. There were definitely nicer waterfalls that I would have liked to stop closer to see.
As for the glaciers, well they are just monstrous. We did not see very much calving of the glaciers, however. I was quite disappointed about that. I was hoping to see much more of that on this cruise.
We did see a bit of wildlife on the cruise, but not a heck of a lot really. We got up close to some sea otters, who were playing around the boat. We also saw some harbor seals, and plenty of birds of course. They say the cruises out of Seward are better for seeing wildlife. We’ll have to do that one next time.