Ice Fog in Light and Dark

This is my first trip home since getting into photography, and I realize now what a different challenge this place is for a landscape shooter. The the local terrain is decidedly underwhelming with its rolling hills and lack of features, but the most contentious part is the lack of light. No other place I’ve traveled has winter days like these, where the sun skirts just briefly over the horizon. But there is so little light here that it in itself becomes profound. For most people the long dark is incredibly taxing, and Seasonal Affective Disorder is a real danger. But I altogether immune to it and even thrive in the dark. In the same way that some people are drawn to pineapple on a pizza, I am in love with the dark. I used to work north of the Arctic Circle at a little pipeline station where I did two weeks on, two weeks off. I was assigned night shift and worked from 7pm-7am each day, so during the winter rotations I wouldn’t see the sun the whole time. Being acclimated to the night shift it would take a few days to get back on to a regular schedule when I got home, so I’d only see daylight a few days a month. I absolutely loved it. And now, on these frigid winter days where it’s too cold to snow and the lingering clouds cloak the starlight, I thrive on the dark. In the frigid cold it sometimes feels like the distance between streetlights, neon signs, the glow of TVs through people’s windows, is no less than the distance between stars in the vast of night.

Not a soul around, but lights abound. At cold temperatures the humidity in the air freezes and forms ice fog.

Staying warm is a challenge though! It’s -45F and I had to keep the camera battery in my jacket next to my body to keep it warm so it doesn’t freeze. And any time I come in from the field I have to put the Canon in an airtight sandwich bag as it acclimatizes over a 115F temperature change. The last thing a photographer wants is condensation forming inside their camera. And worst of all are the trips going out into the field for nothing! One night I got up at 4AM and went out to Poker Flats for a vivid aurora the geophysical institute predicted. I waited alone in the dark and cold but turned in after 30. I got back to the hotel an hour later without having taken a single picture. But it is worth it for me, if only to see home first hand and experience this short life.

Pedestrian bridge by Alaskaland. This one made the local newspaper and I’m quite proud of that.

Overcast sky in the glow of the city’s old sodium lights.