Ken Hubbard explores the Last Frontier with his Tamron SP 150-600mm VC and 16-300mm VC PZD lenses.

By Jenn Gidman
Images by Ken Hubbard

With its wide-open backcountry, diverse wildlife, and quintessential glacial gems, Alaska offers awe-inspiring scenery you won't find anywhere in the Lower 48. Ken Hubbard visited rugged No. 49 over the summer, bringing his Tamron 16-300mm VC PZD and SP 150-600mm VC lenses to capture the stunning scenery before his viewfinder.

Ken's travels took him first from Anchorage to the city of Seward on the Kenai Peninsula, where he hiked in Kenai Fjords National Park and embarked on a cruise to photograph humpback whales, orcas, and sea otters, as well as the famous Exit Glacier. From there he headed up to Fairbanks, where he stopped to take some photos of Denali National Park and the Alaska Range. "Then I took the long way back to Anchorage along Route 2 and Route 4, where I was able to capture images of moose, valleys filled with fireweed, and, of course, more glaciers," he says.

Keeping his gear to a minimum meant a backpack stocked with just two camera bodies with his Tamron lenses, a speedlight, a circular polarizer, a couple of neutral-density filters, a flashlight, a headlamp, and some extra batteries. "Because I was shooting with just those two lenses, it forced me to pack light, which was a nice change of pace for me," he says. "It was also a test to see how the 16-300mm would hold up on the Nikon D810, which is a very high-res full-frame camera that allows me to shoot with APS-C sized lenses due to its auto-crop feature."

Alaska's extra-long days made for unusual shooting conditions. "While I was there, the average length of daylight was more than 20 hours," Ken says. "There was no escaping brightness. A couple of times I woke up at 1 a.m. and looked outside, and it was still what I'd consider bright. That said, I didn't get discouraged, because even though the weather was a bit damp in Seward, it did make for some great light. Even when storms rolled in, if the storm passed quickly, the light would become very dramatic and I'd get some excellent photos."

The moisture-resistant construction of both lenses came in handy during his trip. "The weather sealing worked fantastic, especially while I was on the Kenai Peninsula," Ken says. "I didn’t see the sun once there, and it was persistently misty, rainy, and damp. but I had no worries when it came to the lenses getting wet."

Circular polarizers and neutral-density filters were critical components in Ken's image-making arsenal. "I used my circular polarizers numerous times to help enhance the contrast in the skies by making the blue skies darker and the clouds brighter," he says. "And because it's always so light out in the summer, sometimes it was difficult to slow down my shutter speed and get that nice, soft look to the flowing waters. That's where my ND filters came in handy."

Ken estimates he used the 16-300 for about 80 percent of the trip. "It turned out to be a perfect lens to keep on my camera all the time, whether I was at the local aquarium or trying to capture a mountainscape," he says. "I ended up doing a lot of driving in Alaska, so I could just put this lens on my camera and leave it in the back seat. Everytime I stopped driving to take a picture, I was able to just grab my camera off the back seat—I had all I needed right there."

On Ken's first day in Seward, he headed over to the city's public aquarium to practice photographing wildlife with the 16-300. "It turned out to be well worth it, because when I was outside trying to capture the animals, they were so small and stayed so far away, so it was almost impossible to capture a decent image," he explains. "For a puffin photo I took, I wanted to create a more dimensional image, so I opened up the aperture to about F/6.3 to blur out the background. Even though the rocks created an appealing textural background, I didn't want the viewer to focus on them, so I made sure I blurred them just enough to make the puffin pop in the image."

© Ken Hubbard

Incorporating S- and C-curves into photos makes them attractive to a photo's viewers in general. If you can find one in nature, such as the curve of a river or other landscape element, and place it in the foreground, it helps draw the viewer into the image, as Ken did with one photo of a river leading up into the mountains. "What also makes this image dramatic is the fact that it was taken about 30 minutes after a rainstorm passed through, like I mentioned earlier," he says. "If you have time to wait out weather situations like this, it can really be worth it because of the dramatic light you'll be able to work with."

Using the 16-300 also allowed Ken to showcase a slice of Alaska life via a Seward boatyard. "When I travel, I try to capture as many types of images as possible, not just wildlife and landscapes," Ken says. "I like to walk around the towns and capture images of the local buildings, shops, and harbors. In this case, the harbor was surrounded not only by an amazing landscape, but by dramatic weather and skies as well."

© Ken Hubbard

Surrounded by icebergs, granite walls, and native marine life, a cruise through the majestic Northwestern Fjords, a wild seascape covered by glaciers just a century ago, is a photographic paradise. Using the 150-600 during the fjords tour gave Ken the reach he needed to capture all of his wildlife photos. "Even though the boat captain brought us amazingly close to all the animals, I still needed that extra extension to get the pictures I wanted," he explains. "The 150-600 helped me capture some amazing images of breaching whales and orca pods. I would have come up a little short if I didn't have that lens."

One of the first images Ken captured with the 150-600 was a whale breach, where the animal leaps out of the water and into the air. "This was actually the second breach that we saw that day—during the first one, my mouth was on the floor and my camera never left my side!" Ken says. "Fortunately, we had an excellent captain who could tell from the way they dove underwater when there would be another breach. I zoomed to about 300mm and focused on an area where the captain felt the whale would come up out of the water again. As soon as I saw the nose of the whale break the surface, I zoomed the rest of the way to 600mm and started firing the camera to capture it in midair."

Ken was also able to photograph a sea otter just outside the harbor. "I wasn't even set up yet when I spotted this little guy," he says. "I was in the process of setting up one camera with the 16-300 and another with the 150-600. I had the 150-600 in my hand when the captain said, 'If you look off our starboard side, you'll see our first wildlife sighting.' There was that sea otter, just chilling in the 40-degree water."

After his adventure into the glaciers of the Northwestern Fjords, Ken headed back to Seward. "On the return trip, we encountered some misty, foggy weather," he says. "The way the light filtered through, this photo I took of an island turned into an optical illusion of sorts and looked like multiple islands stacked up against each other. That amazing light helped create an amazing picture."

To see more of Ken Hubbard's images, go to www.kenhubbardphotography.com.