Mush -- as they say in the movies!

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With the Adelaide heatwave extending until all we're dreaming of it winter, I thought -- "Let's go back to Fairbanks with today's photo. Snow. Ice. Sub-zero temperatures ... dog mushing. For Fairbanks in March, it was a bautiful day. In fact, this is the very tail-end of winter, where spring ("breakup" as they call it in Alaska, because it's when the ice breaks up) is right around the corner. Needless to say, it was extremely cold! It was also quite bright on this day in 1999. I'm standing on the edge of the road, just outside downtown, and the mushers' starting line is about a hundred yards out of picture to the left. I actually misjudged the lighting conditions, and was shooting on 200ASA film; I should have been shooting on 400ASA -- I'd forgotten that even on a brilliant day, Alaska is comparatively dim because the sun never gets very high, so far north. This is a 600dpi scan from the old print, color corrected to rebalance it after considerable fading. It sure brings back memories! Photo by Mel, 1999.

Broad Pass, Alaska, in winter

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Two major highways run between Anchorage and Fairbanks, Alaska. It takes about seven hours to drive the shorter of the two (the Parks Highway), which is 323 miles/520 km, long ... or, that's the theory. The fact is, you can take twelve hours to drive it -- if you stop every ten minutes up the road for a photo-op. And believe me, the ops are almost everywhere you look. It's one of the most scenic highways in the world, especially in winter. This section above is Broad Pass, photographed in the late winter of 1999. I stood in the middle of the road and turned a complete three-sixty, creating a long, long panorama. The straight horizontal line you see in the lower section of the shot is the railroad. And yes, it was cold. Very cold. It was also extremely bright, with the sun reflecting off the snow. The camera was the Pentax K-1000; the filmstock was Kodak Royal Gold 200. The old print is now fading, and after it was scanned at 600dpi it was intensively ehnanced to return the digital photo to the original colors and brightness. Photo by Mel, 1999.

Colors blaze on Stampede Trail

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Fall in the Alaskan interior is an amazing time for a photographer. One normally thinks of "fall colors" as meaning trees, but in fact it's more than that. Stampede Trail is not far from Fairbanks, and it's a fairly well-kept secret ... meaning, the tourists don't know about it, the tour buses don't go there -- the road is a mass of holes that look like shell craters, and if your car doesn't make it out, well ... you have a long, long walk to the nearest phone! This photo was captured in September of 1999. The camera was a Pentax K-1000, and the film stock was ASA200 Kodak Gold. The old print was recently scanned at 600dpi and given some serious digital enhancement to overcome a decade's worth of fading. The light in Alaska is deceptive: even on a bright summer's day you'll be surprised by your meter readings ... it's not as bright as you think. The human eye is deceiving, and the fact is, this close to the arctic circle, the sun is never high enough to create the kind of brightness we know downunder. Photo by Mel, 1999.

Tribute to the pioneers in Fairbanks, Alaska

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There's an easy way to tell that this picture was captured in summer: the water's flowing! In winter the fountains will be ice, and Golden Heart Plaza -- in the heart of Fairbanks, Alaska -- will be white with snow. Its a lovely spot, right beside the Tanana River, a great place to take a packed lunch and watch the world go by, on sunny days from May to September. The statue is a tribute to the pioneers -- fearless colonists and their dogs -- who opened up Alaska. This image was taken in the summer of 1998. The camera would have been a Pentax K-1000 or the Olympus OM-10 ... and most likely the Pentax (there's a subtle difference in shots captured by the Olympus; I preferred the Pentax and traded the Olympus for a second K-1000 later in '98). The lens would have been the standard 49mm Pentax original. The print was recently scanned at 600dpi and color-corrected: the decade-old prints are starting to fade. Photo by Mel, 1998.

Fall comes to the Fairbanks hills

The further north you travel, the earlier autumn arrives ... and the shorter the time it stays! Fall in Alaska is a ripple which begins in the Arctic and heads south, and in any one place it only touches down for a few days before the leaves fall and winter seems to be knocking at the door. In the hills around Fairbanks -- the location of this shot -- you can be sure you've wandered into an enchanted forest. The whole world seems to have turned gold ... but it doesn't last. You seize the opportunity and shoot ten or twenty rolls of film, fast as you can! This picture is a scan from a print made in 1999. The camera was a Pentax K-1000; the lens was probably the Tamron 80-200mm zoom. The film stock would have been Kodak Royal Gold. It was scanned at 600dpi not long ago, and enhanced in Irfanview. (My best work from the era was done on transparency ... difficult to scan on the desktop, even if I had access to the slides, which I don't. Alas, they're in storage.) Photo by Mel, 1999.