It is 9:48 p.m. on June 25, and I am at Fairbanks International Airport. The airport is bright and spacious, much as Alaska itself had been promised to be, and as I struggle to stay awake while waiting to board, I remind myself why I decided to come here in the first place.

When I booked my flights from JFK to Anchorage, I expected my Alaskan photography trip to bring two things: the complete loss of any meaningful sense of time for a couple of weeks, and the particular kind of thrill I associate with backpacking trips from my younger years. I imagined experiencing these sensations somewhere deep in the wilderness of Katmai, photographing bears as they calmly enjoyed the salmon run, or in similarly cinematic scenarios that tend to materialize in your mind as you reply to Outlook emails on a Monday morning. What I did not expect was to experience this thrill before I had even boarded the plane.

Indeed, almost twenty-four hours ago, I had received a text message that read, with admirable brevity, “Your flight from JFK to Anchorage has been canceled.” This message was promptly followed by relentless reminders that time does, in fact, exist, delivered in the form of endless customer service calls accompanied by a lo-fi soundtrack, a rushed taxi ride to the airport, and three delayed planes: JFK to San Francisco, San Francisco to Fairbanks, and finally, if I happen to survive the next twenty (now expected to be forty-five) minutes, Fairbanks to Anchorage.

In front of my gate, I stare at an entire wall covered in moose and bear plush toys, proudly displayed outside the duty-free shop. I briefly wonder whether photographing these might provide some form of thrill. The board announcing my long-awaited flight to Anchorage reads “Delayed — 25 minutes.” In the background, lo-fi music plays. I am reasonably certain it is the exact same lo-fi music that accompanied my hours on hold with customer service.

If in my daily life I consider myself a loyal vassal of delays and missed deadlines, this is one occasion where punctuality is non-negotiable. The rest of the group, whom I will now refer to as the crew, since it sounds considerably more adventurous-y, is converging on Anchorage tonight from various parts of the world. If I do not normally consider myself a morning person either, tomorrow, June 26, at 8 a.m. sharp, the time of our departure toward the Denali National Park, I intend to be one.

Both the group and the trip itself are built around a careful balance. Half of the crew consists of professional photographers or expert naturalist guides, while the other half is made up of enthusiastic amateurs and devoted enjoyers of nature. Among the professionals are people who have won major wildlife photography awards and worked with organizations such as WWF and National Geographic. 

I, of course, fall firmly into the amateur category. Beyond losing track of time and experiencing some thrill, my third, and perhaps most ambitious, goal is to become better at capturing animals in their natural environment. I have some experience photographing migrating birds in New York City, or the many raccoons inhabiting the Ramble in Central Park, but Alaska is something entirely different.

The sole purpose of the upcoming fourteen days sounded deceptively simple when the crew discussed it over several organizational Zoom calls: to capture beauty, wanderlust, the inevitable Into the Wild atmosphere, and a collection of other ideas that became increasingly convincing after sufficient repetition and prolonged scrolling through persuasive images on Pinterest.

These serious intentions, however, came with a side effect: they stressed me out. I was far from a professional, and although I was there to learn, I could not shake a persistent sense of impostor syndrome, or perhaps a mild form of performance anxiety. This feeling was not helped by the fact that, for a few days, we would share our hotel with wildlife filmmaker Bertie Gregory and his crew, who were preparing for an expedition to a remote region of northern Alaska.

As I waited for my plane to Anchorage, I found myself handling my Fuji camera compulsively, repeating the same gestures over and over: changing settings quickly, switching to burst mode, cycling through autofocus tracking for birds and mammals, trying to commit everything to muscle memory. It felt less like preparation and more like training for a competition, one in which I was not entirely sure I belonged.

The plane to Anchorage finally boards with just fifty minutes of delay. It seems I am going to make it in time after all. As I step onto the aircraft, it feels as though the most adventurous part of the trip is now behind me, and that I can finally relax.

This, in retrospect, is a remarkably naïve thought.

Meeting the crew upon arrival at the Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport dissolves most of my doubts almost immediately. There is, of course, the usual ritualized exchange of gear-related bravado: obligatory claims about Sony autofocus superiority, casual comparisons of lens lengths, polite but unmistakable flexing. And yet it quickly becomes clear that none of us is here primarily to get the best shot. We are here to experience the wilderness of Alaska. Good photographs, it turns out, are a corollary, what I would define as an afterthought. This is mildly absurd given the sheer quantity of gear, planning, and obsessive optimization involved, but it seems that either it is true or this sense of detachment is just a symptom of everyone’s, not just my own, impostor syndrome or performance anxiety. I ponder this as, over dinner that same night, we start discussing each other’s quiet personal checklist of desired photos, what professionals call a shot list—a private catalog of images they would very much like to bring home. The most popular is the classic Thomas D. Mangelsen “Catch of the Day” shot: a salmon suspended midair on its way into a grizzly’s open mouth at Brooks Falls. Close behind are bald eagles on the beaches of Homer at low tide, a humpback whale breaching with the Kenai Fjords behind it, a bull moose standing in a field of fireweed, and Denali towering above braided rivers under an improbably clear sky.

These are the images we pretend not to chase but secretly hope will find us.

I include myself in this “us,” despite not having prepared a formal shot list. My main intention is simply to photograph wildlife without the unavoidable presence of humans. In New York, wildlife photography is possible, but rarely truly wild; traces of humanity are very hard to keep out of the frame. Except perhaps in a few hidden corners of the Ramble, it is difficult to produce an image that feels untouched. My Alaskan shot list, therefore, is simple: anything without people in it.

The combined overlap between everyone’s shot lists and the places where such images are actually possible determines much of our itinerary, which, like the group itself, is split between careful organization and chaotic opportunity. The first week will take us to Denali National Park, where we hope to spot Dall sheep, whose rarity turns out to depend heavily on knowing where to look, along with bears and moose. On the return from Denali, we will stop at Hatcher Pass, a mountain region known for sightings of the American pika, a small alpine relative of rabbits often mistaken for a marmot. From there, we will head south to the Kenai Peninsula, exploring Kenai Fjords in search of sea otters, orcas, and whales. Finally, we will reach Homer, the coastal town built on a narrow spit of land that serves as our gateway to Lake Clark and Katmai National Parks, where we hope to photograph bears catching salmon at the height of the run. The remaining week of the trip is deliberately left open. It functions as a contingency week: if we are unsatisfied with our whale photographs, we return to the Kenai Peninsula; otherwise, we focus on bears, birds, or whatever we failed to see during the first half of the journey.

Planning a trip around animals works a little like the Pokémon games I used to play on my Nintendo DS. You study a creature, determine where it might appear, travel there, wait, explore, and hope. Then, in an unpredictable mixture of luck and preparation, you might encounter it. Whether the resulting photograph resembles the image imagined in your private shot list depends on an almost absurd number of variables—something that would become one of the most important lessons of the trip.

The next morning, I attempt to dress like a morning person and wake up at 6 a.m. to prepare my gear. The first image I hope to capture is Denali’s peak rising above a landscape of braided rivers. We expect several opportunities along the drive north; excellent views of the mountain can often be found along the Talkeetna Spur Road and from the village of Talkeetna itself. Our plan is then to board a small Cessna aircraft to fly around the mountain and photograph it from above.

This means I will probably need a wide-angle lens—around 12 mm—and, depending on the weather, perhaps an ND filter for longer exposures. I know this not through expertise, but because I watched the rest of the crew mounting those lenses and quietly mimicked each of their gestures while preparing for our first day of shooting.

As we drive north, I immediately understand the importance of the contingency week, which I had previously dismissed as excessive. We stop at nearly every viewpoint along the road, each time hoping to glimpse Denali—a solitary mountain that, in photographs, had reminded me of Erebor—only to find it completely hidden behind clouds.

With every mile, disappointment grows. It becomes anthropologically fascinating to observe a car full of photographers disguising collective frustration in remarkably creative ways, ranging from profound critiques of their own equipment to extended philosophical complaints about the unpredictability of weather. When we finally arrive in Talkeetna, we are informed that conditions are too cloudy for the plane to take off and circle the peak.

And so, we do not fly.

The next day is our first day in Denali, and I keep moving my alarm, normally set for 8:30 a.m., earlier and earlier, finally settling on 6 a.m. The gear I pack this time is entirely different from what I brought the previous day. Our plan is to photograph moose, bears, and caribou, so I mount a long zoom lens of about 600 mm.

This is where the major photographer flexing begins, as everyone shows off their zoom lenses from Sony, Canon, and Nikon. I own a Fuji, a brand not typically considered ideal for wildlife photography because of slower autofocus and a more limited selection of long zoom lenses. This fact had never bothered me too much until now.

I chose Fuji for a simpler reason: the greens. The greens rendered by the Velvia film simulation are the most beautiful greens I have ever seen, richer than memory and more vivid than reality itself. They transform landscapes in a subtle but unmistakable way, making forests look deeper and fields more alive. It was this particular shade of green that ultimately convinced me to choose a Fuji camera over the more wildlife-oriented systems the rest of the crew now proudly compares in the hotel lobby.

But faced with this carnival of massive fast zoom lenses,  doubt begins to creep in. What if, despite all the effort and planning I can invest into a photograph, my gear simply is not good enough for this trip?

As we drive toward Denali, we constantly remind each other to keep watch for animals. Because none have appeared yet, this slowly turns into a quiet competition over who will earn the honor of shouting “BEAR!” or “CARIBOU!” first. The car would be completely silent if it were not for the Last of the Mohicans soundtrack playing on repeat since the previous morning.

My early morning adaptation process is slow, so I fall asleep, only to be awakened by a loud shout of “MOOSE!” followed immediately by its Italian translation, “ALCE!”, from the back seat. The brakes screech, and the car stops abruptly.

I am sitting in the front and instinctively reach for the door handle, but everyone immediately tells me to stop. If my hand had brakes, it would screech.

I am already excited to see the first wild animal of the trip, but what happens next fascinates me even more. Animals are easily startled, and a startled animal becomes a fleeing animal, which means either a blurry photograph or no photograph at all. The goal, therefore, is simple: do not scare the animal.

Eight people suddenly jumping out of a car with cameras would almost certainly frighten even a large moose standing calmly in a meadow covered with fireweed. Instead, we exit slowly from the side opposite the animal, making as little noise as possible, and remain partially hidden behind the silhouette of the car. Only then do we position tripods, prepare cameras, and begin shooting in near silence. If the animal remains calm and continues grazing, we may gradually approach.

Wind direction also becomes crucial. Because animals often possess a far stronger sense of smell than humans, approaching from downwind is essential to avoid revealing our presence.

I find this method deeply fascinating. Every possible sense the animal might use—sight, sound, and smell—is carefully considered. The objective is not simply to photograph wildlife, but to avoid disturbing it and allow the animal to behave naturally. On some occasions, you are even expected to predict the next behavior. For instance, when photographing eagles and birds, you try to anticipate them taking flight, so you gradually learn the cues the animals give before doing something.

I manage to take no good photographs of the moose. In my excitement, I leave the ISO far too high despite the full daylight. But as the animal eventually retreats into the forest and we return to the car, I feel unexpectedly content. I realize I am sharing this journey with people who genuinely care about animals and want to capture them in their most natural state.

Seven days later, on the beach in Homer, applying the same techniques I learned that first morning, I would find myself five meters away from a young eagle chick playing with a stick, taking what would become my favorite photograph of the entire trip.

The following days become an unstoppable series of thrills as we move through Alaska’s national parks, the same thrills I had been daydreaming about while booking my flights to come here. On the same day, we might watch a mother bear and her cubs wandering across the tundra of Denali and then fail completely to spot a single pika in the dense fog of Hatcher Pass. We struggle to find Dall sheep until another photographer, whom we meet while photographing trumpeter swans, tells us exactly where they descend to graze along the Seward Highway in the early afternoon. In Kenai Fjords, we are fortunate enough to witness humpback whales performing bubble net feeding.

Without consciously realizing it, somewhere between trying to keep my balance on a small boat approaching a group of sea otters and sitting in a Cessna flying over Denali on a rare sunny day of the contingency week, I completely lose any meaningful sense of time.

With each opportunity, I succeed and fail in roughly equal measure at capturing wild moments. Every evening, during our informal roundtables at dinner, we review each other’s photographs and exchange feedback, moments that are sometimes encouraging and sometimes humbling. My third goal for this trip had been to improve at photographing animals in their natural environment. During my first few days, I believed this meant checking all the boxes on our collective shot list: an eagle in flight, a bull moose staring directly at the camera in a meadow, and so on.

But this begins to bore me slightly. The process starts to feel like a simple translation from idea to action to photograph, something oddly unsatisfying even when my images are filled with the Fuji Velvia green I love so much. I also notice how many of our photographs look almost identical each evening, resembling the postcard images of Alaska that I studied on Pinterest before arriving.

Around the fifth or sixth day, at the edge of the contingency week, I begin experimenting and looking elsewhere whenever possible. During our visit to Brooks Falls—often considered a pilgrimage site for wildlife photographers, where hundreds of thousands of salmon attempt each year to leap upriver and sometimes end their journey in the mouth of a waiting bear—I find myself photographing something different. Instead of focusing on the classic image of a bear catching a salmon mid-jump, I take far more photographs of the dense red carpet of salmon gathering below the waterfall, waiting for their turn.

In this sense, I begin to think of my shot list not as something defined beforehand, but as something understood afterward—an unplanned sequence of images that reveals itself only once the journey is over.

These are the photographs I find myself returning to as I wait for my flight back to JFK. They are full of the Fuji Velvia green I love, and they contain no traces of human presence. Looking at them, I realize that the night before my departure, twenty-four hours before my flight, I checked my phone almost hoping to read a message that said, “Your flight from Anchorage to JFK has been cancelled.”