We Come From The Land of The Ice and Snow...*

Most of this past week was spent out of town – waaaaay out of town – and as far North as a person can possibly go in the United States.  Though I can't give any real specifics about the sort of work that I'd been involved with (NDA's were signed), I can tell you that I traveled around Alaska for a few days, and that I made it as far North as Point Barrow for an afternoon, which IS the Northernmost location (71˚23'20") in the United States.

Point Barrow (and the nearby town of Barrow) is situated about 300 miles above the Arctic Circle, and at this time of year experiences a full twenty-four hours of daylight.  Myself, I wasn't in the area long enough to experience the continuous daylight phenomena this time around, though past projects have had me up in Barrow for extended periods, and I'm very familiar with the "Is it twelve midnight or twelve noon?" sort of confusion that arises after a few days of work in the region.

Here's a quick lil' tourist photo that I took at the Whalebone Arch Park in Barrow.

Shot on my iPhone, this image shows an arch structure – made from the rib-bones of a whale – sticking out of the tundra, with the nearby ice shelf in the background.  Also shown are two small whaling boats (minus their sealskin covers), along with the skullbones of a whale, just below and behind the arch.  Each rib stands about twelve feet in height.

For anyone who might be interested in the technical aspects of this image, I shot this on my iPhone, and then ran the image through a basic Photoshop app to reduce the saturation.  On my main computer, I resized the image and inserted the basic copyright info.

Interestingly, though I also shot much the same image with a "real camera," I much prefer this iPhone image to the so-called real camera photo.  Chase Jarvis has popularized (and trademarked) the phrase "The best camera is the one that's with you."™  I'd like to make a slight adjustment to that statement, and change it so that it goes something like: "The best camera is the one that takes your best pictures, regardless of price or megapixels."

I won't be trademarking that phrase any time soon.

****************************************************************
****************************************************************

*My sincerest apologies to Led Zeppelin.