Down the Alaskan Road, and the Washburn Exhibit

Our crew at the West Rib in Talkeetna, first meal after getting off the bush plane. So, the question is, should Lou keep the griz look or not? Lisa, what say you?

We got Joe, Ty and Colb dropped off at the Anchorage Airport last night for their redeye back to Colorado. After a good night’s sleep, we’re headed south with the truck and trailer. We’re motivated to get a Mount Hood summit or something like that on the way back, but as you can imagine we’re also ready to get home. We’ll blog from the road as we did on the way up here, but may have a few days out of touch as we roll through the Yukon. So stay tuned.

Oh, and yesterday afternoon we completed our AK experience with a bit of culture at the Anchorage art museum, where they’re hosting a large display of Brad Washburn’s photographs of Alaskan mountain terrain, with emphasis on the Alaskan Range of course. His prints are old-school black&white, silver gelatin 16×20 inches. A bit different than viewing photos with Picassa on your computer LCD. I still like the simplicity and power of a good B&W print, and most of Washburn’s fall into that category, though a few appeared to be poorly printed and really didn’t need to be hung. Yet overall, stunning.

Washburn exhibit.

My favorite of the lot, titled Shoup Glacier Takes a Turn.

The main thing about Washburn is the extraordinary effort he went through to do many of his photos as aerial shots on large film. The results are amazing, with tack sharp detail from edge to edge in his large prints. Without some expensive and high-end digital gear you’d be hard pressed to match the level of resolution some of his prints have, though if you did figure out a rig that did that, it would no doubt be smaller and lighter than the gigantic camera Washburn used, suspended from rope in the airplane door!