denali and a distraction

 i've been laid up with a herniated disc that's been pressing on a nerve root since early may. the last 2+ months have been spent almost entirely in bed and have been limited to photographing what had wandered into or was already in my yard. one of the biggest disappointments of the entire experience was not being able to get to denali national park this summer. in my humble- yet accurate- opinion, denali is the most beautiful place to spend time with a camera. i spend much of my time during our long, dark winters here in alaska daydreaming about the 3 or 4 four day weekends i get to denali national park each summer. an obsession with photographing the wolves of denali has taken hold the past two years, and am frustrated to have to wait another 7 or 8 months until i get the chance to get back there. it will be made up for next summer, i assure myself of that.

one of the few blessings to result from the forced down time this summer is it gave me the time and space to put together my website www.quietalaskaimages.com and this companion blog. i'd guess that i've spent almost 200 hours looking for forgotten photos, processing and reprocessing- and often processing a third or fourth time- photos, and uploading to the site.  very few of those hours were spent on the site design itself.  smugmug makes it easy with both their customization features and wonderful technical support mentioned in the previous post. i'm proud of the images on the site, and thankful that it gave me something productive and positive to focus on. it's not hyperbole to say that the website saved me from losing my mind.  the epic physical pain, disability, the myriad of medications, lost time from work (for the record: i didn't miss my day job at all, but missed the hell out of my yoga students), weekly disputes with my insurance company, and the ridiculously beautiful alaskan summer days right outside my window that i couldn't enjoy- the sum of which nearly drove me truly mad.  whether i make a dollar, a thousand dollars from my website- i couldn't care less.  it's already paid for itself, and then some.

first post- an ode to smugmug

it's only appropriate that my first post be about the wonderful techs and support staff at smugmug: http://www.smugmug.com/ if you're looking for a great site to display and sell prints from, smugmug is well worth checking out. not only is your site easy to build (even for us non-geeks), but their customer support is better than that on any company or website that i've ever needed. they're so patient and supportive, i'd swear they're not human. i couldn't have put my site together without their help. a special shout-out also to kevin wilson, a smugmug support hero who went way above and beyond the call of duty. in what would've taken me two weeks, kevin customized my site in 15 minutes- all after he'd gone home from the office for the day. thank you kevin, and thanks smugmug.