Calving of Marjorie

After our captain had announced preparations to leave the bay, we lingered on deck a while as the ship began to move. Nearly spinning on its center, the other side of the ship was a better place to watch from, so we headed to our own balconies. On the way, we stepped out onto a public balcony that ran across the aft width of the ship. No sooner did we get there than we heard the exciting sound.

It sounded as if Marjorie were clearing her throat to catch the attention of her audience. And then a fairly significant chunk of the glacier tore lose and fell into the bay. Calving is as exciting to watch as pretty much any sort of creation. One thing had existed, that thing changed, and the result was an independent being of its own. Small, fated to a meltdown in the coming days or weeks, but the center of attention for its time in the sun. We saw three such calvings in a short period of time, and then Coral Princess was moving away. We dressed for dinner and looked forward to our stop in Skagway.

Two Poems:

BIRTH OF A BERG

Marjorie Glacier, marquee star of the Glacier Bay ice show,

Bright reflecty white but highly tinted with blue

Rubbed over with as cinders in places

Dripping at times, quiet at others;

Like all stars she commands the stage

Demanding total concentration for the act

And now she clears her throat like a grade-school teacher,

Her thunderous "ahem" turning every eye to the stage

And Marjorie calves once again, filing the sea with icebergs.

STILL AS A GLACIER

Glaciers might fit in many analogies

Cold as a glacier for example might work

Still as a glacier, however, makes no sense

To anyone who watched on runoff or calve

Cruising Glacier Bay

Imagine a National Park that has no apparent paved roads; the visitors use the water to see the majesty of the frozen rivers. Most of a day involved cruising by several glacier areas, one more picturesque than the other.

A note on photo composition. Yes, indeed, I have heard of the Rule of Thirds. I can't say I agree with it being a "rule," though; in my Photography Workshop I teach it and the Concept of Thirds. I developed a grid overlay that can show the focal points perfectly, but no rule is better than the eye of the photographer. The reflection of the glacier gently invited me to collect it, to admire it, and to respect it. That is what I tried to do with this image. The power diagonals certainly invite the eye of the viewer to explore.

A note on Photoshop. Yes, I do post process; sometimes heavily and sometimes quite lightly. I know that historically, photographers carried gradient filters for images such as this. In the camera, this image was too light above and too dark below. While the same filter would still work, I have such a filter built right into Photoshop. Using CS2, a full two generations behind the cutting edge, I can do so many things to enhance, to correct, to experiment. I can work hard and I can have fun. And all these efforts are work of the photographer trying to refine the image to become the image he had in his mind.

So, the moral of the dual lesson is simple. Know the rules and know when to break them. Get the image as good as you can in the camera and then do what you must to make it the image you want. If the result is a photograph that please the photographer, it is a success.

We will return to Glacier Bay on the next post and you will meet a Glacier named Marjorie.