Alaska has no shortage of subject matter worthy of a photographer’s interest. My problem is that I live here and see it every day. Because of its ubiquity, I rarely have the desire to capture any of it on film. It’s no surprise that most of my photographs are taken on vacation -- it’s on these trips that everything seems new and exotic, to me at least, and I can hardly keep my finger off the shutter release.

This is one of a few Alaska photographs in my collection worthy of posting.

It’s easy enough for me to remember exactly when this photo was taken – it was the day before my wedding and throughout a hike up to the Mendenhall Glacier I was constantly worried that I’d trip, break a leg, and ruin my big day. I, and two of my visiting-from-out-of-town best men, wanted to get all the way up to the edge of the glacier and with the hectic wedding schedule; it was the only day we could fit it in.

After a couple hours into what was supposed to be a brief hike, we arrived at a high, rocky outcrop. While we stopped for a quick snack and debated whether or not we had enough time to descend to the ice, I spied some tourists below us, taking their own break. Looking through my point-and-shoot’s lens at its maximum zoom, I wished for my SLR with its much longer focal length. 3x was all I had, but it turned out to be enough to get at least a little bit of distance compression into the resulting photograph.

The day turned out to be a good one for photos. We decided to make the effort to get all the way down to the glacier’s edge and I have some wonderful photos of us crouched under a deep blue, glacial ice overhang. Unfortunately, I doubt anyone but the three of us would be interested in seeing a picture on this site that prominently features our smiling mugs.