Face The Outdoors

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Face The Outdoors Landscape and wildlife photographer in Fairbanks, Alaska. Face The Outdoors is a small-group aurora and outdoor experience based near Fairbanks, Alaska.

I run small-group photography workshops — coastal brown bears at Lake Clark, aurora, and international destinations — plus northern lights viewing tours for travelers who want to see the lights. We offer two ways to experience the north. Aurora viewing tours from our private dark-sky lodge — small groups of no more than ten, well away from Fairbanks light pollution and the crowds. The lodge is home base; when clouds move in, we go mobile and find clear sky. Comfortable, personal, and built around actually seeing the northern lights, not rushing through them. Small-group photography workshops in Alaska and around the world — landscape, wildlife, and aurora. Northern lights and coastal bear photography here at home, plus international landscape workshops in places like Norway and the Dolomites, led by photographer Michael Schultz.

Last night on my drive home from Anchorage. Seems like yesterday I was wrapping up the aurora season. Not too much longe...
08/14/2026

Last night on my drive home from Anchorage. Seems like yesterday I was wrapping up the aurora season. Not too much longer before the grind starts.

Bubble net feeding humpback whales in Southeast Alaska — seven days photographing wildlife around Sitka, Kake, and Peter...
08/08/2026

Bubble net feeding humpback whales in Southeast Alaska — seven days photographing wildlife around Sitka, Kake, and Petersburg with Neil at Whale Song Expeditions.

We spent about an hour looking for the bubble net group and found fourteen to sixteen of them working a ball of herring. We counted 51 surfacings. The 51st came up off the bow at about fifteen feet. The hydrophone gives you the calls before they rise but not the location. The gulls give you the location, and sometimes the birds are wrong.

One creek outside Kake had fifteen black bears in it, all of them on chum salmon. A sow put her two cubs up a tree and went fishing. They fell asleep up there while she worked. I could hear them crying to be fed the next morning before I got to the water. Two boars wanted the same spot and went at it in the rain until one left.

Coastal brown bears on the tide flats, a sow with three cubs of the year pulling chum out of the shallows at low tide. Sea otters in the kelp, harbor seals on the rocks, eagles filling the cove. Over 70 whales for the week.

More from this trip coming.

Tried some intentional camera movement at Caddo Lake — the technique I always mean to use and then forget the second I'm...
07/24/2026

Tried some intentional camera movement at Caddo Lake — the technique I always mean to use and then forget the second I'm set up.

ICM is simple on paper. Slow the shutter down, drag the camera straight through the scene while it's open, and let the trees smear into vertical streaks. On paper.

In practice I get to a place like this — cypress standing in still water, fall color coming in — and my brain locks onto the normal composition and I never think to try anything else. This trip I actually remembered.

Two frames here. One leans on the autumn color up in the canopy. The other on the reflection at the waterline, where the trunks and their mirror image nearly line up. It doesn't always work — most of the drags I made that morning went in the trash. But when it lands, Caddo Lake stops looking like a photograph and starts looking like a painting of itself.

Glad I made myself try it.

The trip report from June's spring bear workshop at Lake Clark is up.Five days at Silver Salmon Creek, a small group on ...
07/15/2026

The trip report from June's spring bear workshop at Lake Clark is up.

Five days at Silver Salmon Creek, a small group on foot, and bears every single day. Six of them on day one. A sow found a skate washed up on the shore and sat down to eat it. Another one ran down a boar and the two of them paired up right in front of the lodge.

Most of the week belonged to a sow the lodge calls Long Nose and her two cubs — a bold little female and a mama's boy who never got more than a few feet away. She taught them to clam out on the tidal flats and they'd copy the dig for a while, then break off to chase seagulls, or wrestle, or get completely absorbed in a stick. One of them spent a while trying to climb the anchor line on a dry-docked boat before moving on to inspect the outboard.

You're close enough out there to hear all of it.
The whole week is written up — plus the frames Janice, Kelly, and Steve brought home, and the 2027 dates. Link's in the first comment.

Coastal brown bears at Lake Clark, Alaska — a sow and her two spring cubs in the sedge meadows.She nursed them right in ...
07/02/2026

Coastal brown bears at Lake Clark, Alaska — a sow and her two spring cubs in the sedge meadows.

She nursed them right in front of us, then sat up to keep watch while they settled in on either side of her. The little male on the left is still wearing the evidence. A milk mustache on a brown bear cub is not something I had on my list for this trip, but there it is.

She knew exactly where we were the whole time and decided we weren't worth the interruption. Twenty minutes like that. You don't plan a frame like that. You just get to be there for it.

What's the most unexpected wildlife moment you've had in the field?

Shore Acres on the Oregon coast in January, late afternoon, storm season. I shot both of these within the same hour off ...
06/28/2026

Shore Acres on the Oregon coast in January, late afternoon, storm season. I shot both of these within the same hour off the same headland and the light couldn't have been more different — one went flat and silver with the spray hanging in the air, the other warmed right up as the sun dropped toward the water. Same swell hammering the same rock shelves both times. You find a safe place to stand and let the ocean do the work.

First bear we got our cameras on this spring at Lake Clark, and she'd already found breakfast — a skate washed up on the...
06/25/2026

First bear we got our cameras on this spring at Lake Clark, and she'd already found breakfast — a skate washed up on the beach that she wasn't about to leave behind.

We'd barely made it in. On the drive to the lodge a mating pair crossed the meadow, but every camera was still packed away, so we just watched that one go by. Then this sow settled into the sand with her skate and gave everyone time to get set up and actually shoot.

Coastal brown bears work the tideline like this — taking whatever the water leaves behind. Not a bad way to open a week on the Alaska coast.

Most photographs aren't lost in the moment. They're lost in the few seconds before it — while you're still thinking abou...
06/20/2026

Most photographs aren't lost in the moment. They're lost in the few seconds before it — while you're still thinking about your settings.

I've watched it happen in the field for years, most of it out here in Alaska. The light turns, or the bear lifts its head, or the aurora finally goes off, and the people who miss it usually aren't the ones who don't know their camera. They're the ones still building toward the shot when it's already happening.

So I don't shoot ready. I show up ready.

Wildlife, landscape, night sky — three completely different setups. A bear and the aurora ask opposite things of a camera. But the habit underneath is identical: I dial in for the shot I expect before it arrives, so when it shows up, the camera's already out of my way.

I put my actual field setup for all three into a short free guide — Set Before the Shot. What I lock in, what I stop thinking about, and why, for wildlife, landscapes, and the night sky. It's free — link's in the comments.

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Delta Junction, AK

Opening Hours

Monday 3pm - 8pm
Tuesday 3pm - 8pm
Wednesday 3pm - 8pm
Thursday 3pm - 8pm
Friday 3pm - 8pm
Saturday 3pm - 8pm
Sunday 3pm - 8pm

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