What an amazing trip to Alaska we had this year. Just what you want – a mix of weather for dramatic scenery, good wildlife opportunities and great people. We liked it so much that we’ve just scheduled for the same trip next year – June 28-July 6, 2010. Check out Dolphin Charters in months to come to see more details and to sign-up. We’ll be posting a summer journey blog entry there next week…Meanwhile, if you have any questions about the trip, feel free to ask away here or via e-mail.

I have to confess that this is a crop from my 300mm with 1.4x lens image of the otters – they are so shy and it would take luck and a much longer lens than I could hand-hold on a moving boat to capture them this size without cropping. This is about a 40% crop but the final image still has a good amount of pixels in it – 4900 x 3256 – which is why I love having the largest megapixel cameras out there. I kept my shutter speed high – 1/1000 sec, because the boat was moving and they were moving the other direction! When that happens, you have to go higher than you think. Some were initially fooled by that and didn’t have the shutter speed high enough. It’s hard to know exactly how fast you’ll need, so it’s best to push it further than you think to be on the safe side. Once I checked the images, we had a ‘formula’ for capturing more of these cute critters.

The otter population in Glacier Bay is a true success story – they were introduced a while ago and have really taken a liking to the place. It’s cool – they float in and out on the tidal currents, and we loved watching them bob along carefree – unless they suddenly realized we were too close! Then – whoosh – they were gone, under water, to resurface as a ‘raisin’ in the viewfinder! But we did get lucky here and there and got the opportunity to capture this mom with her ‘pup’ floating by.

I’m still working on Alaska pictures to post to Flickr – so stay tuned!!!