Weekly Post: TATSHESHINI: Saving a River Wild

TATSHENSHINI:  Saving a River Wild by Robert Glenn Ketchum

In 1990, I was invited on a 10-day float down the Tatshenshini, a huge river system flowing from Western Canada to the Pacific Ocean that literally divides two of North America's largest national parks, Canada's Kluane National Park and Alaska's Glacier Bay National Park. A gold mine was being proposed mid-river. I broke the story in LIFE magazine. There were many other articles and a book. The mine was never developed and the river is now a wilderness corridor. This is a conservation SUCCESS story!

Tuesday, August 23, 2016

TATSHENSHINI:  Saving a River Wild, #116

TATSHENSHINI - Saving a River Wild, #116:  With boats reloaded and preparing to leave, I stood on the shore of our camp and gazed at the amazing view of Alsek Lake and the surrounding summits one more time. The clouds lifted a little, the sky opened, and sunlight filtered through onto the the glaciers on the other side of the lake. THIS IS WILDERNESS! And this wilderness is one that I helped to create using words and pictures. How fortunate can someone be, to be part of a collective group that helped to create the largest contiguous, legally protected/designated wild lands in the ENTIRE world. My career has been blessed with some unique adventures, and some of them are conservation success stories as well, so although this blog now closes, I hope you will follow others that I post weekly ( http://rbtglennketchum.blogspot.com ), and if you are particularly interested in how I have used my work on behalf of conservation, please follow:, the recently launched, and next week, the debut of THE TONGASS - Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees. Thank for following my tale of the Tatshenshini. I hope you have enjoyed it. (Oh yes, we floated to the airstrip without incident, the planes made their way in through the weather to pick us up, and we were all drunk at the Alaskan Hotel and Bar in Juneau a few hours later - after showering!)

photograph(s) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2016, @RbtGlennKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd #Tatshenshini @glacierbaynps @Life @Wilderness #WeAreTheWild  @nature_AK

Follow Robert Glenn Ketchum's Photographic Activism & Art Online:

WEBSITE: http://www.robertglennketchum.com/

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VISIT OUR STORE:  http://shop.littlebearprod.com/Artist-Robert-Glenn-Ketchum_c57.htm

SOCIAL MEDIA by @LittleBearProd: http://www.LittleBearProd.com 

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Weekly Post: THE HUDSON RIVER AND THE HIGHLANDS by Robert Glenn Ketchum

THE HUDSON RIVER AND THE HIGHLANDS 

by Robert Glenn Ketchum

This is the story of my first major commission and book, THE HUDSON RIVER AND THE HIGHLANDS (Aperture, 1985). In 1984, #StephenShore, #WilliamClift, and I received a 2-year commission from the Lila Acheson Wallace Fund to photograph the #HudsonRiverValley. This blog tells the tale of the book, with many photos not seen before. Enjoy!

Monday, May 2, 2016

THE HUDSON RIVER AND THE HIGHLANDS #187:

HUDSON RIVER #187:   I thought I would end this blog with this image because most of what you have seen in my posts of the #HudsonRiver have been the "lower" river, a much bigger, broader body of water than these two small streams. However, from small streams, greater rivers grow. The Hudson is born from a small, somewhat swampy pond in the higher elevations of #Mt.Marcy, at 5,344ft, the tallest peak in #NewYorkState. #LakeTearOfTheClouds spawns a rivulet that is debatably acknowledged as the source of the Hudson, but others argue the #OpalescentRiver is the source. Regardless, before you lies their juncture. The Hudson comes in from the left, and the Opalescent from the right. A definitive view point, a beautiful fall day, the ruins of some old stone architecture, and not a #HudsonRiverSchool painter in sight. I hope you have enjoyed this body of my work. Although my Hudson River blog is ending, I am using my blogs as my autobiography, so we are starting a new post which I hope you will follow: THE HIGHER YOU GET, THE HIGHER YOU GET - Sun Valley and the Decker Flat Climbing and Frisbee Club.

photograph(s) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2016, @RbtGlennKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd @Wallacefdn @Aperturefnd @PentaxOnline

Follow Robert Glenn Ketchum's Photographic Activism Online:

WEBSITE: http://www.robertglennketchum.com/

TWITTER:  http://www.twitter.com/RbtGlennKetchum

LINKEDIN:  http://www.linkedin.com/in/rbtglennketchum

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Phil Borges: iLCP in livebetter eMagazine

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Photograph © 2012 Phil Borges.  For Display Use Only, No Permission to Reproduce in Any Form.

CLICK HERE >> to read the article by Phil Borges:  "Tibet:  Culture at the Edge, Devotion, Development and Climate Change"

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Photograph © 2012 Jenny E. Ross.  For Display Use Only, No Permission to Reproduce in Any Form.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE ARTICLE;  Jenny E. Ross, Life on Thin Ice™

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Photograph © 2012 Christian Ziegler.  For Display Use Only, No Permission to Reproduce in Any Form.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE ARTICLE >>> Christian Ziegler, The World of Wild Orchids

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Photograph © 2011 Florian Schulz.  For Display Use Only, No Permission to Reproduce in Any Form

 CLICK TO READ THE ARTICLE > Florian Schulz: 'To the Arctic:  Intimate Photographs of Arctic Wildlife'

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Photograph © 2011 Brian Skerry.  For Display Use Only, No Permission to Reproduce in Any Form

CLICK TO READ THE ARTICLE >Ocean Soul: Photographs by Brian Skerry

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Photograph © 2011 Gary Braasch.  For Display Use Only, No Permission to Reproduce in Any Form

CLICK TO READ THE ARTICLE > Gary Braasch's Images of Change: 'Documenting A Warming World'

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Photograph © 2011 Daniel Beltrá.  For Display Use Only, No Permission to Reproduce in Any Form

CLICK TO READ THE ARTICLE > Daniel Beltrá, 'BP's Deepwater Horizon: America's Haunting Catastrophe'

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Photograph © 2011 James Balog
For Display Use Only,
No Permission to Reproduce in Any Form

CLICK TO READ THE ARTICLE > James Balog, 'Serving As Witness to Environmental Change'

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Photograph © 2011 Miguel Ángel de la Cueva
For Display Use Only, No Permission to Reproduce in Any Form

CLICK TO READ THE ARTICLE > Miguel Ángel de la Cueva, 'Oasis of Stone:  Visions of Baja California'

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Photograph © 2011 Garth Lenz
For Display Use Only, No Permission to Reproduce in Any Form

CLICK TO READ THE ARTICLE > Garth Lenz, 'Alberta Tar Sands: The True Price of Petroleum'


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Photograph © 2011 Robert Glenn Ketchum
For Display Use Only, No Permission to Reproduce in Any Form

CLICK TO READ THE ARTICLE > Robert Glenn Ketchum, 'In Defense of the Natural World' 

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Photograph © 2011 Amy Gulick
For Display Use Only, No Permission to Reproduce in Any Form

CLICK TO READ THE ARTICLE > Amy Gulick, 'Salmon in the Trees'

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Photograph © 2011 Patricio Robles Gil
For Display Use Only, No Permission to Reproduce in Any Form

CLICK TO READ THE ARTICLE > Patricio Robles Gil, 'The Passion and Essence of Nature'

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Photograph © 2011 Robert Glenn Ketchum
For Display Use Only, No Permission to Reproduce in Any Form

CLICK TO READ THE ARTICLE>  Robert Glenn Ketchum, 'Nature’s Tireless Advocate: A Conviction of the Heart'

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Last Minute Eco-Friendly Gift Ideas!

Are you still searching for the perfect gift? Why battle the crowds when you can find the ideal eco-friendly gifts online at my store. Here are some great ideas:

HARDCOVER, 'PAMELA BURTON LANDSCAPES' BY PAMELA BURTON - Pamela Burton Landscapes presents nineteen of her built works for public and private clients, with sites ranging from beach to desert and from farm to city block.

PAPERBACK, 'ART EDUCATION AND ECO AWARENESS: A TEACHER'S GUIDE TO ART & THE NATURAL ENVIRONMENT' BY HEATHER ANDERSON - Use the power of art to inspire youth to appreciate, understand, and protect their environment.

HARDCOVER, 'SALMON IN THE TREES: LIFE IN ALASKA'S TONGASS RAIN FOREST' BY AMY GULICK - A 2010 Independent Publisher Book Award winner, Salmon in the Trees tells the story of the Tongass, a 17 million-acre temperate rain forest fringing the coastal panhandle of Alaska and covering thousands of islands in the Alexander Archipelago.

JIN JIANG JOY SILK SCARF, (22" x 72") - “Launch,” the high-quality 22" x 72" lustrous silk scarf shown here has been produced in a signed, limited edition of 200.

LATCHKEY NECKLACE - An antique vintage skeleton key finds new use with Turquoise cylinders paired with semi-precious Carnelian in this limited-edition necklace.

NEW PUBLICATION: Art Education and Eco Awareness: A Teacher’s Guide to Art & the Natural Environment

"The Chainsaws of Summer", 1992.  Photograph © 2010 Robert Glenn Ketchum.

For Display Use Only, No Permission to Reproduce in Any Form.

A new educational textbook on art education & eco-awareness is out, and it features one of my photographs, 'The Chainsaws of Summer", pictured above.  It's good to see that future generations are being taught important things!  #rgk

Art Education and Eco Awareness: A Teacher’s Guide to Art & the Natural Environment

By Heather Anderson

Use the power of art to inspire students to appreciate, understand, and protect their environment.

Organized around five fundamental environmental elements—land, water, sky, plants, and wildlife—this book uses inspiring fine art and plentiful hands-on art experiences to motivate students to look closely, think carefully, and find out more about the world around them. 144 pages, 120 color images

Inside you’ll find:

• 25 hands-on art lessons for elementary and secondary students
• Profiles of ground-breaking environmental artists, including examples of their works, statements of their philosophies, and links to their websites and writings
• Over 30 full-color works of fine art with environmental themes
• Over 100 full-color works by elementary, middle, and high school students in a variety of media
• Hundreds of eco awareness activities that help hone artistic, research, and critical thinking skills
• A bibliography of classic and contemporary works on environmental issues and artists’ lives
• Up-to-date information, including Web resources, on a wide variety of art and environmental organizations
• A combined glossary of art and environmental terms

Table of Contents:
Introduction
The Program
Aims
Structure
Teaching the Program

Part 1: Lesson Plans

Land
Art, Land, and Activism
Featured Artist: Jody Pinto
Magnificent Mountains
Vital Valleys
Discovering the Desert
Along the Coast
Alaskan Wilderness

Water
Art, Water, and Activism
Featured Artist: Cheri Gaulke
Flowing with Rivers
Celebrating the Sea
Wetland Wilderness
Cascading Waterfalls
Languid Lakes

Sky
Art, Sky, and Activism
Featured Artist: Andy Lipkis
Clusters of Clouds
Rain and Storm
Fog, Smog, and Mist
Sunrise and Sunset
Nebulous Night

Plants
Art, Plants, and Activism
Featured Artists: Robert Glen Ketchum and Karen Stahlecker
Terrific Trees
Great Grasses
Flaming Flowers
Glorious Gardens
Desert Flowers

Wildlife
Art, Wildlife, and Activism
Featured Artist: Lynne Hull
Magnificent Mammals
A World of Birds
Recognizing Reptiles and Amphibians
Insects and Spiders
Sea Creatures

Part 2: Resources
Bibliography
Organizations
Glossary
Index of Artists and Artworks

Climate Change

My ADHD mind operates in funny ways. I am a peripatetic collector of information related to subjects of interest. Before the “gathering” capacity of the internet, I clipped from newspapers and magazines and kept the clippings in manila folders sorted by subject. Those files tracked the complex politics and media battle of the Tongass rainforest. Other files like them served as the text base of my book, "OVERLOOKED IN AMERICA: THE SUCCESS AND FAILURE OF FEDERAL LAND MANAGEMENT" (Aperture, New York, NY, 1991). The information contained in it spanned 20-years of clipping collecting.

Callison, Charles and Robert Glenn Ketchum, "Overlooked in America: The Success and Failure of Federal Land Management", Aperture, New York, NY, 1991.

Currently two issues I follow closely are the struggle to protect the salmon fishery and wild parklands of southwest Alaska and Bristol Bay, and the growing effects of climate change around the world. The net offers me many more sources of information and many new ways to collect “clippings”.

Over the past 12-years I have published 2-books (Rivers of Life: Southwest Alaska, The Last Great Salmon Fishery, Aperture, NY, 2001 and Wood-Tikchik: Alaska¹s Largest State Park, Aperture, NY, 2003) and have put together a national traveling exhibit to protecting the parklands and wildlands of Southwest Alaska and offshore fishery of Bristol Bay from the industrial invasion of oil and gas leasing and a huge open pit mine.

I track things in the press that have meaning for me when I see their "collective” effect. Many times stories I believe are truly important are buried in short bytes on page 18 of some newspaper, or more often stories come from widely disparate world news sources so never all readable in one place. Blogging lets me present some of these collections to you in real-time as they occur so I am dedicating specific blogs to specific subjects if you would like to follow what I am tracking.

With regard to climate change, as most of you know, myself and many of my affiliates at the International League of Conservation Photographers (iLCP) have worked on related stories for more than two decades. My own tracking interests follow earthquake and volcano activity which I believe are being fueled by the ice melting off great land masses like Greenland and Antarctica, allowing those land masses to “move around” and disrupt all the other tectonic plates.

Photo Credit:  Les Scott.  Volleyball-sized hail from Vivian, SD, July 23, 2010. 

There is also amazing science and discovery related to weather, and thunderstorms in particular. Massive thunderstorms are delivering microburst rains that are setting rainfall records and flooding large parts of the world at this moment. These storms are also conjuring up ever-larger hailstones that are establishing records and wreaking awesome damage.

Photo Credit:  NASA.  554 Wildfires Rage Throughout Russia, Covering Moscow in Smoke, August 8, 2010.

Simultaneously, 2010 proved to be the hottest summer in world history causing raging wildfires worldwide. Russia burned and melted down, and how far north is Moscow? New research now has identified that mega storms and mega hail are fueled by the very specific particulate matter that is created from wildfires. So, as we get hotter and burn more, it makes the storms larger, more dangerous and capable of delivering more water. These storms are also off-the-chart electrical, and the lightening strikes just fuel more fires.

Photo credit:  Jay Fine/Caters News

 We rate hurricanes by degrees, Class 4, etc, tornadoes by force strength, F5, and earthquakes by numbers that top out at 10.0 That does not mean larger storms and earthquakes aren’t possible, we have just never seen them at such scale. Nor do I want to!

I am no scientist, I am just sayin', this is interesting, and I think it is much bigger than we know...

~ Robert Glenn Ketchum

#rgk

AMERICAN PHOTO Magazine, Mar/Apr 2010 : MASTER SERIES NO. 5: ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM "A Voice in the Wilderness", by Russell Hart

Just updated part of my blog with the actual .pdfs of my American Photo magazine Master Series No. 5 article. Thanks again Russell!

http://rbtglennketchum.blogspot.com/p/american-photo-magazine-marapr-2010.html

AMERICAN PHOTO Magazine MASTER SERIES NO. 5: ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM 'A Voice in the Wilderness,' by Russell Hart Publication Date: Mar / Apr 2010 Photograph © 2010 Robert Glenn Ketchum 

 

#rgk 

#art #lbp

 

TIES and ESTC

Downtown Portland at Nightfall, taken from my iPhone...

 Recently I returned from Portland, OR where I attended The International Ecotourism Society's  (TIES) conference, 'Ecotourism and Sustainable Tourism Conference' or 'ESTC10' for short.  Founded in 1990, TIES has been in the forefront of the development of ecotourism, providing guidelines and standards, training, technical assistance, research and publications. TIES' global network of ecotourism professionals and travelers is leading the efforts to make tourism a viable tool for conservation, protection of bio-cultural diversity, and sustainable community development.

The ESTC is North America’s largest and only conference focusing on sustainability in the tourism industry.   My longtime friend and colleague, Hunter McIntosh, of The Boat Company, got me involved in a panel discussion at this year's ESTC.  

We participated in a panel discussion consisting of Hunter McIntosh of The Boat Company, Dave Parker or Orvis Travel, myself (Robert Glenn Ketchum) and Larry Edwards from Greenpeace USA.  The topic of the panel was 'How To Build Win-Win Partnerships For Your Business and Community'.

Specifically, I was at the conference to speak about my relationship with The Boat Company which goes back nearly 25-years. They supported my work in the Tongass and the distribution of the Tongass book on Capitol Hill as well as an exhibit at the National Museum of Natural History. Our working relationship is an example of a sustainable tourism business partnering with an individual through many different ways, but purposefully to protect the geographic area in which they were running their tourism business. Our partnership had many significant effects, not the least of which was helping to pass the largest timber reform bill in American history.

Oh, and by the way, The Boat Company is a non-profit educational organization offering luxury eco-cruises through Southeast Alaska. They specialize in treating the needs and wishes of each guest effortlessly. Hikers, fishermen, sightseers, and all sorts of outdoor adventurers are in heaven with The Boat Company.  I have been on their boats many times.  They are without a doubt one of the very best  ways you might ever see the Tongass. The dining, especially fresh catch is AWESOME.  The guides know all the secret trails and coves.  And... they can deal with your kids!  At 8  and 11, my two children did their first trip.  Now they are whining to go back.

#rgk