I'm ba-a-a-ck...
It was a marvelous trip to the north country, with the whole panoply of conditions - sun, moon, clouds, rain, snow, and AURORAS. Thursday night was amazing and we were out to the wee hours totally in awe. Friday and Saturday were mixed during the day, cloudy at night, but we were still out to the wee hours hanging around the campfire hoping for clearing. Last night was crystal clear, nearly full moon and several hours of Aurora shooting, not quite as great as Thursday, but still worthy. Saturday we drove up to Chandalar Shelf for an incredible sunset and then on up to the summit of Atigun Pass (the nemesis of Ice Road Truckers) where there was quite a lot of snow. Wiseman is a nearly abandoned old mining town (basically two families live there now) with wonderful old buildings and rusting mining equipment everywhere, set in a gorgeous valley that was dazzling in fall colors.
I had such a great time, Carl was an excellent instructor, and since there were only three of us "students," we got lots of personal attention. I have a lot of photos to go through, and, yes, CC, I did them in RAW and faithfully used the histogram, even though that was outside my comfort zone, so I suspect it will take me a while to process, but I also shot JPEGs, so will probably post a couple of quickies tomorrow just to whet your appetites.
Wiseman is bordered by Gates of the Arctic NP on the west and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge on the northeast. Something I didn't know is that the area of ANWR is roughly the size of South Carolina. It's absolutely amazing country, and I can't wait to share it with all of you.
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I'm glad you had such a great trip. And of course, I'm looking forward to the pictures!
Welcome back!
Looking forward to the photos!
Thursday night was so awesome, it would have been worth the trip. Sunday was just icing on the cake. 
on the trip and getting some clear skies and auroras.
I thought you had started to shoot to RAW and check your histograms a while ago.
Did Carl go into it and color balance in more detail? I find it easier to learn if someone can be there talking me through it. I retain it longer if I can do the actual adjusting, button pushing. It can take a bit longer to upload and adjust from RAW but you have so much more to work with on top of getting it as close to perfect as you can in camera.
path Carl started you on. You will thank yourself if you do eventually. You should be able to do the layers etc. in paint shop. I know how Carl feels trying to translate Nikon to Canon. It isn't that one is better than the other so much as they do things so different it is hard to remember. I stuck with Nikon when I went digital because the menu seemed so much easier to operate even though I had used both Nikon & Canon film cameras.
Oh no, that puts all your kids in the lower 48. I know they are all grown but still. Now why couldn't one of them head east so you would have to visit this way.
