Seward, Alaska: where the boats come in

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The Small Boat Harbor, Seward, Alaska, welcomes you ... on (believe it or not!) a fine day in the late summer of 1997! I was staying aboard the yach Ghost Rider, which is berthed to the right of the frame (the picture is clear enough for you to read her name). Seward is notorious for the gray skies and rain of the Gulf of Alaska, but in this shot it's not raining -- nor was it actually cold. Until you got out onto the water, of course! The harbor is incredibly busy, with commercial trawlers, fishing charters, tour boats, passenger liners and the coast guard. This old photo was just scanned at 720dpi and given a few nips, tucks and tweaks to bring it up to snuff, since the print is starting to fade. Photo by Mel, 1997.

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.