Back on the Water

Passing through Ballard Locks aboard S/Y Abuelos, Seattle, Washington

There’s no such thing as a cheap boat. The first nautical joke I ever heard was that boats are holes in the water into which you pour all your money. It’s taken me years to realize that it’s not actually a joke. And to “money” I’d add all your time, effort and dreams

In spite of it all, I have come to love the things. I think about them constantly. Boats in general, and mine in particular. I once lead a happy and simple life. Get up in the morning, take some pictures, cash the check and sleep in a warm bed dreaming contentedly of business class upgrades. 

Now, not so much. 

Instead of f-stops and shutter speeds, I obsess over smoking marine diesels and weepy transmissions and balky electronics. 

I wasn’t even looking for another boat. Just idly following the swirling eddies of my wandering attention over to the online used sailboat listings. My first boat, the long-suffering C-Sick, had withstood much at my hands, enduring ten years of Alaskan and Arctic summers. More than 10,000 collision-prone miles of clumsy seamanship, dubious navigation, and negligable maintenance. We would soon be parting ways. I’d sworn to God and my wife Janet, not necessarily in that order, that if I lived through that final Hudson Bay gale, I’d never take her north again. 

I had convinced myself that a pilothouse sailboat, around thirty feet or so, was just what I needed. Something sturdy with proper sails and a heavy keel and a cozy teak cabin to explore the waters closer to home. If I was going to afford her, the boat would likely be a fixer. A little rough around the edges, but nothing a little elbow grease couldn’t fix. And not twenty minutes up the road floated a prime example of “be careful what you ask for.”

When I first poked my head inside, I was struck by a number of things. The smell of mold and mildew and years of neglect. The scattered chaos of old blankets and fishing gear and damp cushions down below. But it was hard not to focus on the foot of oily water rising above the floorboards. I took one look around, stopping just long enough to peer down into the watery depths of the engine compartment at a half-submerged diesel, then walked back to the dealer and handed the keys back, and said “She’s a project, but she’s somebody else’s project. Good luck with that.” I wanted no part of it.

And yet, I started rolling it over in my mind. If there was ever a sailboat to be bought on the cheap, this was it. I went back. Poked around. Turned the bilge pump back on and a hundred gallons of water into the port of Edmonds before the batteries died. I sought the advice of an wizened Norwegian boat mechanic who pointed at the muck-covered engine and said, “Them things are hard to kill. Bolt on a new starter, change the belt, put in some new oil and see what she’ll do.” Offer a coupla’ thousand bucks to take it off their hands. A bit of hard work and she’ll shine right up.”

Proving that I learn from past mistakes, I ran this one past the Minister of Finance at home. She took one look at the boat and shook her head in disgust. “Did I neglect to mention that I don’t want a boat?” But she never actually said the word “no.” I offered a pittance. We dickered while the boat filled again with more rain water. They accepted a third of the original asking price and too soon Abuelos (Spanish for both “grandfather” and “old codger”) was mine. 

The trail has been long, and the litany of repairs both expensive and exhausting. I bought a new alternator and starter, then followed You Tube videos to bolt and wire them into place. When I turned the key and the 30-year-old diesel coughed to life, it felt like I’d raised Lazarus from the dead.

Encouraged, I tore out the drooping and vile-smelling vinyl headliner and replaced it with cedar tongue and groove planks. Filled a dockside dumpster with debris then scrubbed down every surface with industrial-grade disinfectant. Took a pressure washer to the birdshit-spattered deck and topsides, then dragged it inside and blasted away at the bilges for good measure, washing away a decade of neglect and goo. Her sails hung like dirty laundry from lines rotten and gray with age. Squandering a rare photographic windfall, I replaced them all, too. 

It’s been a long road, but after more than a year of work and worry and the steepest of learning curves, we’re heading out. 

North to Alaska.

I’m not exactly breaking new ground here. Every summer, more than a million cruise ship passengers make the 800-mile passage from Seattle’s waterfront, up the Inside Passage, to the 49th state. There they will gawk and snap pictures and then return once more to a buffet table groaning with food. For me it will be a chance, if the repairs and my spirits hold up, to see a bit of new country, watch the miles unfold at a stately five or six knots, and return to Southeast Alaska, a place I haven’t seen in nearly a decade. There I will gawk, snap some pictures, and then put on another can of soup and pour myself a finger or two of scotch, see if I can find a drifting piece of ice, and toast absent friends.

Published Work - Wild Planet Photo Magazine

Keith Wilson, editor at Wild Planet Photo Magazine, showed considerable patience and forbearance waiting for me to come up with a list of seven “Wild Wonders” of the natural world. I think the hardest part was narrowing my list down to only seven favorite places.

For the record, here's my list in no particular order:

1. Cuverville Island, Antarctica - Leopard Seals

2. Spitsbergen Island - Polar Bears

3. Galapagos Islands - Darwin’s Playground

4. Churchill, Manitoba, Canada - Beluga Whales

5. Ndutu Plains, Tanzania

6. Snow Hill Island - Emperor Penguins

7. Southeast Alaska - Humpback Whales

2013 National Geographic Photo Contest

Christmas came early this year, when a short email arrived announcing that my polar bear image won Grand Prize in the 2013 National Geographic Photo Contest. I am looking forward to finally, after 30 long years of working as a professional photographer, visiting the Geographic’s legendary offices.

In my newspaper days, we were all contest hounds, living and dying by the monthly press photographers’ clip contest results. Our 2% merit raises were on the line. I was happy to leave that all behind, telling myself the every time an editor licensed and paid for one of my images on the Corbis or Getty sites, I won the most important contest of all. 

Upon reflection, I was an idiot. 

Without a major publication backing me for assignments and publication, most images are so much ‘content,’ disappearing into the vast publishing maw. I am one more anonymous stock provider. For a long time, I was content with that. I made a fine living licensing images that I created on my own projects. So long as my royalty check arrived on time, I could buy another plane ticket and go merrily on my way.

But high profile contests like the BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year and National Geographic’s contest offer something important for those us who are not utterly shameless self-promoters or contract photographers. An audience. It’s a chance to show photographs and tell their stories to a far wider audience than any blog or stock sale can match.

And to be honest, the money doesn’t hurt either. 

I've posted National Geographic's announcement and interview, but the video of the contest's judging offers some wonderful insights as well.

http://proof.nationalgeographic.com/2013/12/19/the-2013-national-geographic-photography-contest-winners/

The 2013 National Geographic Photography Contest Winners

Author

Monica Corcora

137

During the month of November, National Geographic magazine invited photographers from around the world to submit photos in three categories: People, Places and Nature. We received more than 7,000 entries from over 150 countries, with amateur and professional photographers across the globe participating. You can view all of the winning images here.

We asked Senior Photo Editor Susan Welchman, and National Geographiccontributing photographers Stephanie Sinclair and Ed Kashi to judge this year’s photo contest at the Society’s headquarters in Washington, DC, on December 9th.

Imagine a darkened room with images projected on a huge screen, and almost total silence except for the ‘yeas’ and ‘nays’ of the judges and the occasional discussion over specific photos. Several hours later, after multiple rounds of editing, the finalists became clear and the real debate began.

Ultimately, the judges unanimously agreed the Grand Prize should be awarded to Paul Souders for his image of a polar bear lurking beneath melting sea ice in Hudson Bay, Canada. After realizing the photographer had won an award in another contest for a very similar photo, we thought it would be interesting to hear from Paul directly.

Grand Prize and Nature Winner
Paul Souders, Seattle, Washington
The Ice Bear
A polar bear peers up from beneath the melting sea ice on Hudson Bay as the setting midnight sun glows red from the smoke of distant fires during a record-breaking spell of hot weather. The Manitoba population of polar bears, the southernmost in the world, is particularly threatened by a warming climate and reduced sea ice.

Launch Gallery

MONICA CORCORAN: How long have you been shooting wildlife and how/why did you get into it?

PAUL SOUDERS: I’ve worked as a professional photographer for nearly 30 years. It’s the only job I’ve ever had that didn’t involve pumping gas or pushing a lawn mower.

But I never set out to be a nature photographer, I wanted to be a news shooter, and I started my first job at a small daily paper in Rockville, Md., with dreams of journalistic glory. I covered a lot of high school sports, portrait assignments and weather features. It felt like telling the story of my community, one day at a time. At some point, I decided a change of scene was in order. Never one for half measures, I packed up everything I owned and drove 4300 miles to Anchorage, Alaska, to take a job at the state’s biggest newspaper. It was 27 below zero the day I arrived, but it was entirely new and magical. There was a moose in my backyard and I could see bald eagles on my morning commute.

And that’s when I started moving away from news work and toward photographing wildlife. But it’s still the same mission, telling stories about the places I see and the wildlife I encounter. I left the paper 20 years ago and I’ve worked as a travel and wildlife photographer ever since.

MONICA: A near frame of yours won the Animals in their Environment category of the 2013 Wildlife Photographer of the Year photo contest. Tell us the story behind these photos.

PAUL: I had two sharp frames of the underwater bear, and the framing was only very slightly different. I entered the BBC contest right at their deadline, and never compared the two side by side. Once it won its category in BBC (but failed to win the grand prize), I kept staring at the lower right hand corner, where the ice edge is cropped, and it started to bug me. I do prefer this frame, since it has the entire ice edge. It’s one of those little details that can make a picture work just a bit better, but not something I even noticed or cared about initially.

The bear swam up to the iceberg, ducked under and stayed underwater for several seconds as I moved my zodiac into position and then held out the camera on a six-foot boom near the entrance. I didn’t fire until she came up to breathe and take a look at me, and I kept firing the shutter as she submerged again. She hung there, just below the surface, watching me, then came up for another breath before swimming away. I couldn’t see her from where I sat in my small zodiac boat; I was shooting blind with the wide angle. I sensed it was a unique situation, but the first thought in my mind was that I really didn’t want to screw up. I’d already dunked the remote radio trigger and camera into the salt water, and had to jury rig a replacement cable by chewing off the copper wires and hand-splicing it together. I don’t know how, but somehow it worked.

MONICA: Do you have any advice for other wildlife photographers?

PAUL: My standard advice is to marry well. And don’t quit your day job.

It is REALLY hard to make a living at this. I was lucky enough to begin a photo career at a time when you could earn at least some sort of meager living at it. A newspaper photographer’s salary wasn’t much, but at least it was a job, and an amazing training ground where I got to shoot pictures every day. I worked around other, better photographers who helped me learn my craft. And I actually got paid to do it. I worry that it’s much, much harder for the next generation of photographers to make a living and build a career.

I consider myself very fortunate to continue to make a living pursuing work that I really love.

MONICA: What are your thoughts on entering photo contests?

PAUL: I like to think I’m past the point in life where I live and die by contest results and the momentary ego boost they provide.

What I do appreciate is how contests can bring storytelling photographs to a wider audience, and how they can captivate an audience of millions to see the natural world’s fragile beauty, and to motivate them to take an active interest in experiencing and protecting it.

Nanpu Bridge, Shanghai, China

I thought I’d gotten away with it, the old cheerful trespassing thing. Right up to the moment I saw the fat girl in the mini skirt.

I’d just brazened my way past a bored security guard downstairs, hopped an elevator to the 22nd floor and then scurried up a darkened stairwell onto the roof with whatever stealth I could muster carrying a tripod, backpack of gear on creaking knees. But now we stared at each other across the abandoned and not open-to-the-general-public rooftop.

I’m not sure who was more surprised, but I just smiled by biggest, dumbest smile, pointed out at the view and chirped “photo…okay?” and went about my business like I owned the place. She had just finished a cigarette and in her imagined privacy, was beginning to hawk up something that seemed to start from down around her pelvis.

Our mutually exclusive language skills kept any unpleasantness to a minimum. She unhappily swallowed, blinked, and went back inside. I gave a cheerful wave before crawling out onto the building’s ledge.

My second grade teacher wrote all the way back in 1967 that “Paul thinks rules are for others.” I often think of her at times like this, wondering if she had any idea how right she was.  Below me, a view of the double-helix Nanpu Bridge, scenically clogged with traffic, lay swirling and aglow in all it’s engineering glory across the Huangpu River 25 floors below.

Since I was here, I might as well take a picture or two.

Shanghai, China: October 30, 2013

Shanghai, China

Another day of the new Chinese century begins. I blink awake in darkness and with scrambled time zones and dulled senses, I hit the streets. In the hours before dawn, kites dangle blinking and flashing UFO lights in the dark sky. That most Chinese of sounds, the deep throat clearing haaaaawk fills the air. It is accompanied by bellows of conversations, blaring tinny music, taxi horns and the rumble of coal barges heading up the Huangpu River’s murky waters.

Across the river, the old tallest building in China (c. 1998) stands dwarfed by the recent tallest building in China (c. 2008), but both look positively quaint beside the rising new tallest building in China. I’ve come in part to update my image files of the city skyline, but like a lot of things, I can’t tell if I’m early to the party or late.

A crescent moon rises and the skies begins to lighten, and soon traffic springs to swerving, honking, chaotic life. It quickly achieves its default setting: Gridlock.

Along the river’s cement promenade, a pensioner unfolds hand-crafted and beautifully painted kites in the form of eagles. He heaves one skyward in the morning light, slinging it in tight circles in the hopes of gaining altitude. It crashes. He picks it up, tweaks a wing, tries again. Crashes again. Smiles as I take his photo. Tries again, utterly serene.

Nearby, a martial arts group mixes tai chi poses with flying leaps. A ballroom dance club competes with an aerobics group for sonic dominance.

All told, it feels like a lot is getting accomplished before I’ve even had my first cup of coffee. Pondering my place in this busy new world order, I stumble off the sidewalk and through the clotted traffic, greeting an uncertain new dawn.

Shanghai, China - October 28, 2013

2013 BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year – Animals in Their Environment

Polar Bear lurking beneath melting sea ice on Hudson Bay, Canada. Photographed July 11, 2012 using a Canon 7D camera, 10-22mm lens and at the end of a six-foot camera boom. Exposure 1/320 second at f/4.

I had been making noise for years about going to Hudson Bay to photograph polar bears. The town of Churchill, Manitoba is world-famous for its polar bear viewing in the fall, but who wants to spend a fortune to ride around in a Tundra Buggy with a couple dozen other photographers and tourists?

Wouldn’t it be way more fun to do a BYOB thing? Bring your own boat?

I drove 1800 miles from my home in Seattle to the end of the road in Thompson, Manitoba, then loaded everything onto the train that runs 600 miles north to Churchill. I carried more than 500 pounds of gear; everything I might conceivably need; an 11-foot inflatable zodiac boat, an outboard motor, cases of camera and underwater gear and all the survival equipment I might possibly require. I looked like some kind of crazy survivalist hoarder.

I didn’t know what to expect when I got there. Other than a couple local operators running summer tourists out to swim with belugas, there isn’t a lot of boating on that stretch of Hudson Bay. The coastline is flat and offers no protection at all from storms blowing in off the tundra.

There’s also a huge range of tides, as much as 30 feet from high to low water. The bay is ringed by a quagmire of mud flats when the tide goes out, and if I timed things wrong I had to carry all of my gear nearly half a mile from shore to the water’s edge. It seemed to take forever, hefting the 80-pound motor, then the 75-pound boat, then all of my equipment cases across the mud flats. For an old guy like me, it was a lot of exercise.

Rather than camp out along shore, I slept in a perfectly nice hotel in town every night. But each day I used the zodiac to travel up to 30 miles offshore. I stayed out as long as the light allowed, traveling at the edge of the melting pack ice, scanning each iceberg for the shape of a polar bear.

It was exhausting work, hour after hour staring at the ice, trying to find that white on white shape. As it turns out, it’s really, really hard to find polar bears on the ice, at least without a helicopter and a suitcase full of money.

Sea ice isn’t uniformly white. After the long winter it’s jumbled and covered in dirt and crud from the sea. Polar bears aren’t pure white either. Their coats can be anywhere from ivory to butter to golden in color. In the warm light of the setting midnight sun, pretty much everything looks like a bear. Most days I was out on the water for 12 to 14 hours a day, sometimes until two in the morning. I have never worked so hard and so long to find a subject. In all that time, I saw exactly two polar bears, one of which disappeared almost immediately into the pack ice

Maybe that’s why this this image feels so much like a gift. Having come so far and worked so hard to find this one special bear, tolerant of my presence, curious but not aggressive.

I didn’t rush in when I saw her. I kept my distance and let her grow used to the boat and to my presence. At one point, she swam under a small piece of broken sea ice, and poked her head up through the hole to watch me. I stopped the boat and struggled to mount a camera on the end of a 7-foot long boom to try shooting close in with a wide-angle lens.

But nothing was working the way it was supposed to. I’d already dunked one of my remote triggers in the salt water and wound up hand wiring another by chewing off the leads and jury-rigging the exposed copper wires. It was not pretty. I slowly maneuvered the pole closer to her, struggling to hold the camera steady and fire the shutter.  I was shooting completely blind,  pointing the camera and hoping for the best.

I thought I might have a pretty cool shot when she poked her head up less than three feet from the camera. It wasn’t until a week later, as I was riding the train from Churchill south toward Winnipeg that I finally had time to look through all of my digital files. When I saw the frame of her  lurking under the water’s surface, staring back up at me, I was completely surprised.

I promptly turned into the crazy guy who runs around showing his vacation pictures to everyone on the train.

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Morondava, Madagascar

I left South Africa’s gleaming Johannesburg airport terminal muttering about the homogenization of the world,  bitching at the triumph of international anonymonist architecture. Squeaky clean, brightly lit, fairly shining with stainless steel modernity, I could be anywhere. Sydney or San Diego, Chengdu or Chicago, Dubai or Dallas. Landing in Antananarivo, I reminded myself, not for the first time, to be careful what I ask for. We were met by Ravo, our driver, translator and guide, whisked through the airport trailing a line of underfed baggage handlers and touts, deposited in a shining Land Cruiser and driven directly into the city’s gridlocked traffic.

We spent the next three hours slowly winding through the city streets. This wasn’t my first trip to the rodeo, but I was stunned into silence by the abject poverty of the place. Children and grandparents alike picked through mountains of garbage by the roadside, beggars weaved through the stalled traffic. All the while I sat in a cocoon of soft leather, air conditioning and moral discomfort.

Ten days later, I was tired, dusty and not much the wiser for my travels. Many days, photojournalism feels like one more way to monetize human misfortune.

Which is also a handy excuse to just stay in the rental car.

Once in a while, I work up the nerve to push past that doubt, and go out and face the world. I asked the driver to stop on the airport road, by a large red mud pit. A dozen men or more worked in teams, creating crude bricks. It was brutally hard labor under a scalding hot sun. I was unsure about the reception a posh western visitor trailing cameras might expect.

I was greeted with nothing but gentle curiosity and kindness. Though the portrait reflects the grim working conditions these young men face daily, I felt humbled by their hospitality, good humor and curiosity. The tough part was asking them to stop smiling and look suitably serious.

See Different

Our world is saturated with images. We are drowning under thousands upon millions of photographs. Everybody with an iPhone is suddenly a professional photographer. Anyone with an Instagram account can instantly turn their snapshots into snapshots masquerading as fine art. 

It's not that I begrudge anyone their photographic passions or pretensions.  But over the years, I’ve devoted myself to doing things the hard way. 

Why go on a guided African safari when you can buy a busted-up Land Cruiser and get yourself thoroughly stuck and lost in the Serengeti? What better way to see the wilds of the arctic than from your very own leaky zodiac?  Why take a cruise ship to Antarctica when there’s a ill-tempered drunkard in a sailboat who’ll overcharge you, shower you with abuse and leave you hungry and cold on the icy shore?

Is it because I’m cheap, stubborn and often disagreeable?

Well…um…yes. But it’s also a great way to see things differently.

As much as I might love my Hipstamatic snapshots, I find it a whole more fun and challenging to drag out an old film camera, dig some outdated film stock out of the freezer, put on a balky, blurry lens and try to make something of my own.

Last November, I helped lead a four-week small sailboat expedition to the Antarctic Peninsula. Inspired by Dave Burnett‘s work, I spent the weeks before my departure obsessively scanning ebay and paying inflated prices for a World War II vintage Aero Ektar lens and an even older 4×5 camera. I’m pretty sure the last time someone shot Antarctica with a Speed Graphic was sometime around the Shackleton expedition.

During the trip, I shot tens of thousands of digital images as I wallowed in penguin shit, waded in freezing water, crawled around in the snow and basically had the time of my life. But when I came home, the pictures I wanted to see more than any others were those 99 4×5 sheets of expired Fujicolor 160 color negative film.

In my quarter century of photography, I’ve had neither the patience nor technical skill for large format work. But somehow in our brave new attention-deficit world, it seems the perfect antidote to the sameness that permeates so much of the work I see and that I create.

Every time I head out to shoot, I remind myself to try something new. To see different.

The Independent

Lord knows, it’s been a long time coming, but I am, at long last, slowly breathing life back into the WorldFoto blog. Today’s post shares a recent clip from UK’s The Independent newspaper, which featured my image of a Gentoo Penguin caught in flight near Port Lockroy, along the Antarctic Peninsula. The image is part of an upcoming gallery of images of (nominally flightless) penguins in flight.

Svalbard, Norway

Photographed at Sallyhamna on Spitsbergen Island July 8, 2011 with Canon 1D IV with 600mm f/4 lens at ISO 200

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London Calling

The last time I wore a tuxedo was in for my junior prom in 1977. It was green and had ruffles. And I had a full head of hair, parted right down the middle.

The BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year awards ceremony, held under an enormous dinosaur skeleton in London's Museum of Natural History, was significantly more dignified.

And I didn't have to drink in the parking lot.

I was flattered, honored and insanely lucky to pick up the first two prizes in the Underwater World competition.

My favorite memory of the entire week? Standing off a little bit away from the backlit photographs, and watching the museum visitors slowly walking past, their faces aglow in the blue green light from the backlit images.

Sabi Sands Reserve, South Africa

In the 13 years since I first traveled to Africa, I have always resisted private lodges and safari guides. Mostly, because I'm cheap. But I'm also stubborn.

I've always believed that you remember a lot better when you learn the hard way. When I stepped off the plane and into Cape Town's airport, I didn't know a thing about going on safari that I hadn't learned from Marlin Perkins on Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom. In 1969.

So I set out to learn, by driving across Southern Africa at reckless speed in a rented VW Polo.

There was a steep learning curve.

The 27 hours I spent digging myself out of a swamp using nothing but a sauce pan wasn't even the worst of it.

Which is a roundabout way of saying how delightful it was to enjoy a couple of (free) nights at Sabi Sands Game Reserve. Brilliant trackers and guides shared their encyclopedic knowledge during game drives where you actually spotted game, large and small.

It slowly dawned on me that sometimes it pays to work with professionals.

We stopped to photograph a pride of hunting lions, driving off road in the private reserve and working late into the night. And then we went back to camp, enjoyed a lovely meal under the southern stars and slept in a Hemingway-esque safari tent.

Eating tinned curry and sleeping in the dirt will never be the same.

Summer Solstice, Alaska

On this, the longest day of the northern year, the sun never sets at the Arctic Circle. It loops around, kissing the northern horizon and casting an otherworldly orange glow before rising again.

In 1996, I drove north on Alaska's Dalton Highway, past the Arctic Circle roadside pullout, beyond Atigun Pass in the Brooks Range and down onto the broad open plains that lead to the Arctic Ocean. I parked in an old pipeline gravel pit and set up my tripod.

At 175 miles north of the circle, my compass wasn't much use. I took my best guess at true north, put the sun on the left side of the viewfinder and started clicking. Using an old panoramic film camera, I only had one shot at this. In the days before digital intervalometers, I used my watch to time the intervals. Every 15 minutes I brushed off the bugs, cocked and clicked the shutter, and sat back down.

At five in the morning with the sun climbing back into the sky and the mosquitos gathering strength, I packed it all up and went looking for somewhere to catch a bit of sleep.

Hallo Bay, Alaska

I hate this part. The waiting.

All the endless planning and packing and prep and schlepping mountains of crap to the edge of the continent. And now the boat is packed and ready to go, and I am filled with the gutsick certainty that I have forgotten something very, very important.

I fuel up with $407 worth of unleaded. At least I didn't forget my wallet. The boat settles in the water under the weight of 125 gallons of fuel. That should be enough to cover 400 nautical miles. Give or take.

It's about 50 miles to the end of Kupreanof Strait, and I slowly motor along the northern edge of Kodiak Island through flat, protected waters under a t-shirt sun.

The final 27 miles are another matter. Shelikof Strait divides Kodiak from the mainland Alaska Peninsula. It is a narrow passage of water the stirs all manner of exotic tides, currents and Aleutian storms in an ill-tempered cauldron. I can see the mountains across the strait, their glacial peaks glistening, but te prevailing southeast wind sets up a steep chop against the running tide and the boat starts to buck and slam into the waves. It's feels like some sick rodeo ride. As I try to decide whether to wait or go, a pod of Dall's Porpoises start to play in my bow wave, racing through the water just beside me.

It seems as good an omen as any.

I've done this crossing enough times to remain zen, stare at the distant mountain peaks and try to ignore the battering. Still, the sea scares me more than a coastline full of bears. Which is where I'm bound, Hallo Bay and the Katmai Coast.

In a little more than two hours, I motor into the sheltered waters of Hallo Bay. The afternoon sun turns the verdant coastal slopes an electric green, and the water glows turquoise. It's like Hawaii. With bears.

I love this part.

By the time I make my way to shore, low clouds have rolled in and the tide gone out. I take my dinghy to shore and in the gathering summer dusk walk out into the Kingdom of Bears.

Yasha Island, Alaska

Even before the cold water started to settle around my crotch, I knew this was a bad idea.

I'd been trying to photograph Steller's Sea Lions swimming underwater for the better part of a day, and it was slow going. The novelty of a boat bobbing on its anchor a mile from their haul out had quickly worn off, and I stood for long hours with my underwater camera stuck in the water, photographing precisely nothing. The sea lions were idly playing all around me, they just couldn't be bothered to come visit.

Other pinniped watchers may have packed up and moved on, but I am made of sterner stuff.

As soon as I dragged out my scuba dry suit and started flailing around on deck, the sea lions perked right up. By the time, I got ready to step off the boat and into the water, all of us were palpitating. Them with eagerness for a new plaything and me with something approaching mortal dread. I was five miles from shore, 20 miles from any other boat, swept by currents and surrounded by wildlife of unknown temperament. I tied one of the boat's mooring lines around my waist as a sole concession to safety and dropped into the water.

In spite of their curiosity, the sea lions kept a wary distance. I told myself to relax, at least until I noticed the trickle of water coming in around my poorly sealed wrist. The cold water slowly worked its way up my sleeve, across my chest and created a cold, decidely unpleasant pool around my nether bits.

Even in summer, the water temperature hovers in the high 40's. In spite of that, it is filled with a very busy aquatic community in the form of massive plankton blooms. Great for plankton eaters and the circle of life that feeds upon them. Crap for pictures. As I bobbed soggily about, I stared into cold green murk and watched the shadows of sea lions flit past.

It's one thing to try something radically stupid, get cold and wet and scared, and at the end of the day have something to show for the trouble. This was some other thing entirely. I climbed back out of the water, devoted an hour to wringing out my clothes and gear, pulled up the anchor and moved on.

Frederick Sound, Alaska

The whales are talking to me. Or maybe about me. It's hard to say.

Listening in through a hydrophone dangling down into the water, I hear a trippy chorus. Equal bird chips, armpit farts and creepy satanic music.

Half a hundred humpbacks have gathered in a slow motion feeding frenzy in Frederick Sound, feasting on a massive plankton bloom that has turned the cold water here a cloudy green. They breathe in loud exhalations and gasps through blow holes, then take one final gulp of air before arching their backs, gracefully lifting their tails and diving. They swim down toward the sea floor 300 feet below, then circle back up, blowing circle of bubbles to concentrate the phytoplankton and krill. In the mirror calm sea, you can see and hear the bubbles percolating on the surface. They emerge with a sigh, their massive gullets filled with greenish goo.

Given the whales' bulk, strength and speed, I feel like they're not really living up to their potential here. The graceful ballet is lovely and serene, but I miss the dramatic of humpback group feeding, with whales lunging out the water in a massive hurling sprawl. Then again, subtlety is often wasted on me.

After an hour or two of eavesdropping on their underwater conversation, I start to imagine I understand what they're saying.

"Affordable health care is a fundamental right."

"Glenn Beck is a doucebag."

"You're our favorite photographer. This week, anyway."

I knew I liked these guys.

As more hours pass and dark clouds roll in, their voices turn needling and nagging.

"You call that a job?"

"When was the last time you called your mother?"

"That's a nice boat you got there. It would be a shame if anything was to happen to it..."

Before things turn menacing, a pod of orcas swim past, pinging the krill eaters with their sonar. The scare sends one of the lazily playing calfs into a fit of breaching.

Jumping whales? Now we're talking. It might not be subtle, but it works for me.

Freshwater Bay, Alaska

I came for the whales. I stayed for the jellyfish.

There have been days when the whales have gone wandering, the sea lions scattered and the eagles elusive. But during the short Alaska summer, life abounds below the ocean surface as well.

While sheltering in a small bay from the afternoon winds that turn Chatham Strait into a lumpy, quease-inducing mess, I looked down and noticed an enormous red jellyfish. And another. Cool. They were softly swaying, trailing long translucent filaments.

I quickly dragged out the underwater housing for my camera. There's not much science involved in this. I haven't dropped the requisite thousands on a remote video viewing system, so it's strictly spray and pray. You stick the camera underwater, point it in the general direction of the jellyfish and start snapping.

Even in sheltered water, there's always some current or puff of wind moving the boat. Generally speaking, and I do so from experience, it's a good idea not to run the object of your photographic inquiry through the propellors.

I was feeling very pleased with myself, showing initiative and a bit of macho toughness, spending a couple hours with my arms plunged into the cold water. It wasn't until a dozen thin red welts started rising on my arms that I started having second thoughts.

Icy Strait, Alaska

I hate boats.

I hate the smell, the damp, seasickness, the cramped spaces and the marginal personality types all found out on the water. I'm not the first to say that going to sea offers all the benefits of prison life, with a better odds of drowning.

And yet here I am, charging around the Alaska panhandle in a 22-foot C-Dory cruiser. My living space extends no bigger than a six foot cube. I've been in larger phone booths. But it has all I need for a summer exploring the wild corners of coastline here. I have a bunk, a stove, some heat from time to time, an icebox for the beer and a steering wheel that takes me in whatever direction I'm foolish enough to point it.

The fact that I know fuck-all about boating is not the hindrance you might imagine.

Boat life means having all of the adventures that saner souls leave behind upon departing the cub scouts. Imagine a cross between dorm life and homelessness. Avoid bathing for weeks on end. Crap in a bucket. Sleep on the sofa. Drink alone and to excess. Jabber to yourself and try to avoid law enforcement types.

I finally understand why guys go fishing. It's not about the stinkin' fish.

One more upside? Stuff to buy. And new words for everyday household items which, due to their maritime provenance, have an extra zero tacked onto the end. You need maps (charts), lots of rope (line), a GPS (chartplotter) and several truckloads of additional silly shit. It's like learning a new language, but it's still English.

When I first bought the boat I wandered the aisles down at West Marine with eyes glazed in retail narcosis. It's easy to go a little crazy at first. How else can I explain three zodiacs, four anchors, an arsenal of flare guns and the entire chart set for the Northwest Passage.

But the thing I love most is a chance to go off on my own, into an entirely new wilderness, and explore. Mercifully, there are still places in this world without an RV hookup or Walmart. Riding around in the boat offers the chance to scare myself witless on a regular basis, see cool new stuff and never be at a loss for something to complain about.

They might be a normal person's definition of heaven, but it's pretty close to mine.