Taken near the Chiswell Islands, Resurrection Bay, Alaska, on August 16th, 2009
Alaska is one of those surreal places of the planet: a place that has scenery so breathtaking it seems impossible. The peaks in Resurrection Bay aren’t particularly high, but their sharp spires and glacier-covered flanks make them seem unassailable. I wanted to enhance this fairy-tale, unreachable quality of the mountains, so I placed the warmer, gentler, rocky slopes of the Chiswell Islands in the foreground of the photo to provide a stark contrast to those looming crags off in the distance.