Inner Passage

The first night of the cruise we sailed north/north west through the Inner Passage. Beautiful vistas, snow topped mountains covered in lush green hemlock and spruce and very smooth ocean water was what greeted us. The water was black. I’m sure this is an optical illusion, but when you looked at it, it was black as coal. I shot most of the pictures free hand, on Velvia using the 28-105mm zoom. Shutter speeds were acceptable for handheld vs. sharpness. Mostly I was shooting at the longer focal length.

It was really striking to me just how uninhabited Alaska is. In Ohio, one can hardly go a mile without seeing a house or road or powerline, or some sort of indication that you aren’t that far away from civilization. Mile after mile on the cruise ship, I watched the shoreline pass by without a hint of a human being having ever been there. It seemed as though the territory was virgin, like I was Louis and Clark, seeing the land for the very first time by human eyes. And it was like this every day! The shorelines rarely had any beach. Mostly it was ocean broken by mountains. The mountains just climb ever so steeply from the water and touch the sky. And they are covered in the most wondrous green. Velvia is the choice, and I’m glad I brought along a whole bunch of it. It’s the only film I know of that can do the fantastic beauty any justice. Hopefully, as the photographer, I did my job.

	Wake from the Mercury
	Navigation Pylon
	Inviting water inlet
	View from the upper deck around dusk
	Another wake from the Mercury
	Navigation buoy

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Unless otherwise indicated, all text and photos copyright1995-2000 John Engle