Just returned from spending a week with my friend Colby Coombs and teaching a backcountry photo workshop for the Alaska Mountaineering School. This class was unique in that we hiked into a remote area near Mt. McKinley and camped for a few days. We focused on landscape shooting, adventure sports and how to carry all that photo gear on a backpacking trip.
We had a great group, incredible weather, bears walking by camp and fall colors on the tundra (yes, it is fall in Alaska right now). A great thing about camping is you just crawl into your sleeping bag and watch the sunset from your tent, no need to go anywhere. Denali and the mighty Alaska Range came out in full force.
We brought flash gear with us on this trip, and used a couple of Elinchrom Skyports to trigger some SB900s in our tents under an amazing sunset. I use custom Elinchrom Skyport cables by Flash Zebra to trigger my speedlites from far distances where the SU800 wouldn’t work. Colby is a fantastic ice climber and was happy to climb up onto a fin on the glacier for the top image. This coincided with storm clouds building in the background adding to the drama of the image.
Colby and I used to work together as climbing guides. He continued on to start his own well-known mountaineering school while my interests took me down the photography career path. Great to reconnect!