My wife and I have made several wildlife photographic trips to Alaska and have always been amazed at the beauty and wildlife there. And we always did land based trips, way before COVID (but after we had heard about Norovirus). First, we haven't been to Chugach state park or Wrangell-St Elias. We did go to Kincaid Park in Anchorage and enjoyed it (saw a lynx and moose). We also went to Denali and not sure how you plan to spend your time there, but they don't allow private cars in. So you take a bus which may or may not stop where you want. Are you going to camp there? Or have you been able to book the one place you can stay in Denali (which is very hard to book)? If not, and you are staying outside Denali and going in by bus each day, you might not find it that satisfying. We found that Lake Clark area and Katmai and Kodiak much more enjoyable. If you can budget wise swing it, I would recommend going at least for a day to the Lake Clark area (you need to fly over). It is the most amazing experience! Other areas we really liked were the Haines and Juneau area as well as Glacier Bay National Park. I think to get to some of the areas you need to take a ferry, or at least that is how we went. Let me know if you have other specific questions. I am sure it will be an amazing trip.
PS. I post pics on flickr with the names of the places if you are interested:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/60519499@N00/albums/72157694711451270/with/30395286948/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/60519499@N00/albums/72157684829119473
https://www.flickr.com/photos/60519499@N00/albums/72157671316314736

Where, in the Wrangell-St. Elias NP are you planning to visit? I’m going to make an assumption that you want to see Kennicot Mine and McCarthy. On your return you may want to take a detour and visit Valdez and the Alyeska Pipleline terminus. Bridal Veil Falls is unique, and at Thompson Pass you can walk on Worthington Glacier. Another place to visit is the Matanuska Glacier. It’s a short drive off the Glenn Hwy at about mile 100. I think they charge around $20.00 a person, and you can drive to a large parking area where you can hike out to the toe of the glacier. There are guided glacier tours for a fee, and photograph ice caves.

South of Anchorage you can drive off the Seward Hwy a about 6 miles out to Portage Lake and Glacier. You can’t see the glacier from the parking area, but you can drive partway around the lake to a place where they offer boat tours to where the glacier is.

There is also the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center at Portage, alongside the Seward Hwy. Well worth going in to see moose, grizzly bear, musk ox, bison, wolves and other animals.

I can’t think of anything particularly notable the rest of the way to Seward, but Seward is spectacular, and the glacier tours a great. We like Major Marine, and there is also Kenai Fjords Tours. They vary from 4 to 8 hours in duration.

Just so you know, for your drive to Denali Nat’l Park & Preserve, there was a large landslide along the road that goes into the park, and the road is pretty much shut down. So any bus trips into the Park may be short. However, we also don’t know how the Covid-19 pandemic is going to affect all of these things, so you might want to keep abreast of the situation before you leave on your trip.

Just a thought here, if your trip will have you here the last part of August, you might want to consider spending a day in Palmer at the Alaska State Fair. It’s quite the event and a lot of fun.

Sent to me from a friend:

Dennis

From the BBC – by John Cleese -- March 17, 2020
ANNOUNCEMENT

The English are feeling the pinch in relation to recent virus threat and have therefore raised their threat level from “Miffed” to “Peeved.” Soon, though, level may be raised yet again to “Irritated” or even “A Bit Cross.” The English have not been “A Bit Cross” since the blitz in 1940 when tea supplies nearly ran out. The virus has been re-categorized from “Tiresome” to “A Bloody Nuisance.” The last time the British issued a “Bloody Nuisance” warning level was in 1588, when threatened by the Spanish Armada.

The Scots have raised their threat level from “Pissed Off” to “Let's Get the Bastard.” They don't have any other levels. This is the reason they have been used on the front line of the British army for the last 300 years.

The French government announced yesterday that it has raised its alert level from “Run” to “Hide.” The only two higher levels in France are “Collaborate” and “Surrender.” The rise was precipitated by a recent fire that destroyed France's white flag factory, effectively paralyzing the country's military capability.

Italy has increased the alert level from “Shout Loudly and Excitedly” to “Elaborate Military Posturing.” Two more levels remain: “Ineffective Combat Operations” and “Change Sides.” The Germans have increased their alert state from “Disdainful Arrogance” to “Dress in Uniform and Sing Marching Songs.” They also have two higher levels: “Invade a Neighbor” and “Lose.”

Belgians, on the other hand, are all on holiday as usual; the only threat they are worried about is NATO pulling out of Brussels.

The Spanish are all excited to see their new submarines ready to deploy. These beautifully designed subs have glass bottoms so the new Spanish navy can get a really good look at the old Spanish navy.

Australia, meanwhile, has raised its alert level from “No worries” to “She'll be alright, Mate.” Two more escalation levels remain: “Crikey! I think we'll need to cancel the barbie this weekend!” and “The barbie is cancelled.” So far, no situation has ever warranted use of the final escalation level.

The Russians have said “It’s not us.”

Luminar 4.2 is a parametric editor (LR) as opposed to a raster editor like Photoshop or Affinity. A parametric editor functions by saving an instruction list of what to do (typically a text file) while a raster editor allows you to actually push pixels around. This difference becomes most obvious when you want to do cloning/healing work on an image. The raster editor does a more precise job because of it's pixel level access whereas the parametric editor struggles and often can't do as well.

An advantage of the parametric editor in a raw workflow is that your work, stored as a list of instructions, can be easily changed so that you can work non-destructively and with the ability to surgically alter anything you've done. LR fully supports that goal. Luminar should likewise but doesn't.

For example you decide to make a local change to an image by placing a gradient mask on the image and using that gradient to alter tone or color. You should retain the ability throughout your editing session and if you revisit that edit to be able to tweak the position of that gradient mask. Easily done in LR, Capture One, On1, DarkTable, DXO PL, ACDSee, SilkyPix and more but not in Luminar. Create a gradient mask in Luminar and it's frozen in place. Go back to tweak it's position and you can't. You have to delete it and start over. That sucks.

For example use the cloning/healing function to remove a few stray tree branches from the sky. Luminar can do that but it then freezes that operation so that you can't go back in your edit before that point and make an adjustment and expect that adjustment to update the clone/healing job like it would in LR, Capture One, (see list above). That really sucks because if you make that adjustment that won't update the clone/healing job you have to delete the clone/healing job and do it over again. I can't think of another parametric editor so poorly designed.

Joe