Here is a behind-the-scenes shot from early Thursday morning. I spent the better part of two hours hopping out to this rock and back to my camera, experimenting with different exposures and compositions, adjusting the intensity and direction of light from my headlamp to illuminate the water and backlight myself so I would show up against the dark foreground. I got it all dialed in just before the sky erupted with aurora around 2 am, when I took the shot that was in Alaska Dispatch News on Friday. I almost fell into the water on at least five different occasions and after hiking the roughly 1.5 miles out to this spot and back at night, alone, knowing full well there were bears in the immediate area, I returned home shortly after 4 am, edited through the images and picked my favorite one to post. Needless to say, it was gratifying to have landed a photo on the front page of Alaska’s largest newspaper just 24 hours later.
PS – if you look closely, you can see two salmon next to the submerged log on my right.
