Kenai, Alaska

Alaska is part of my service territory. A few times a year the work takes me north — Sitka, Juneau, Kenai — usually for a week or more at a time. This particular trip was Kenai and Soldotna, early summer, when the daylight stretches so long the nights never really get dark.

I brought my camera on this trip because it lends reason to just go for a walk and to explore the area but with a photographer's eye - a different way of looking and exploring a place rather than just being in a place. I did some research of the local area beforehand and didn't find much in the way of historic sites or compelling subjects. So this isn't a shoot with a thesis but are photographs of things I saw, not photographs about something or any kind of story to tell — and I'm at peace with that. Sometimes you just walk around and see what's there.

What was there: Bonaparte's Gulls working the Kenai River, patrolling low over the water looking for whatever the river was giving up that day. And the Holy Assumption of the Virgin Mary Russian Orthodox Church — small, old, and quietly out of place in a way that makes you stop. It dates to the Russian period, before the United States purchased Alaska in 1867. It's a modest structure. That's partly what makes it worth photographing.

The area is majestic in the way Alaska always is — volcanoes on the horizon, dense forest, the Pacific and Cook Inlet stretching out beyond. But I'll admit that it was sometimes an uneasy feeling when walking some of the trails and wilderness alone, not knowing if there's a bear somehwere nearby!