I'm BACK !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Alaska is an amazing place.....it takes a while to really let the whole thing settle into your mind. The scenery was outstanding, food fabulous, and the trip very memorable from a whole menu of experiences. I hope not to bore you but over the next day or two I'll briefly let you in on a couple of notations I made while traveling. We left from Seattle on the biggest boat I'd ever sailed on. I had been on another cruise from Holland America but it as in the Southern Hemisphere.

I hadn't considered it until our first night, but we were at the same or approximate latitude as Paris...........the sun didn't set till 9:30 or 10:00. It just wears you out....
It took several days, but I did adjust. The water was a Turquoise like I've never seen. Of all of the paintings I've seen of schooners plying the waves in the Pacific Northwest I was always skeptical of the colorations of the water, but the paintings were right on the spot. Combine the wake of the boat with the color of the sea and the brush just fills with color. I found myself staring at the wake almost mesmerized in the patterns that the hull generated. Cheap thrills....

Whenever I travel I have a tendency to meet one or two people that I chum around with. I enjoy people and you never know where life's road is going to send us. Had I not met Byron in the 70's I would have missed out on being involved in the Iraqi hostage adventure in the early 90's. I'm generally open to meeting new people because of such experiences. As I was photographing some coastline I was standing next to a guy that also had a Nikon and we started talking photography.
His camera was the same model I recommended to my nephew and also had the same lens. We hit it off pretty well and covered several topics and decided we would team up on the photographic safari the cruise line offered. I really feel as though the "safari" would have been a complete letdown if he and I didn't walk, talk, and shoot together. He said his wife couldn't figure why he shot some of the images he did.....and I can understand that. As we walked and talked I was constantly shooting it seemed.

When I get into a 'new" area I just "see" so much. My senses seem to become more attuned to where I am and more attuned to EVERYTHING around me. I guess there is an innate talent (????)
I have, that trips my trigger when I start looking for color, shape, texture, design, and light, in combinations of all of the above. Take a step, shoot, repeat....I started to notice after about thirty minutes or so....where'd the time go...that he and I were separated from the group and having one hell of a good time shooting the area around us. We talked of where we were, why I shot what I did, "color field" is a very interesting area for me, and how I picked out the shapes. The shapes and color present themselves to me. I generally don't tell people that but that is how it happens.

To be continued....