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Alaska: A Photographic Excursion
Alaskan photographer Mark Kelley and author Nick Jans capture the essence of Alaska in this award-winning photo book. A beautiful Alaskan memory for those who have been here, an inspiration for those wanting to travel here, and a great journey for those who might not venture here in person. Travel through the coastal rainforest, the fishing towns and ice fields of Southeast Alaska; the glacier-carved landscape of Prince William Sound and Kenai Fjords; through the major cities of Anchorage and Fairbanks; and on to the crown jewel, Denali National Park.
New Second Edition - with over forty new images!
Winner of a Benjamin Franklin Award
"Alaska truly lives up to its billing as the Great Land, a landscape so vast and varied that it seems beyond the scale of human comprehension. After spending a combined six decades here, Mark and I have figured one thing out: we are never going to be able to show it all. Our offering is a mere sampler of the riches in this state, one we hope will bring you back, wanting more. All told, it is a dazzling journey." - Nick Jans, Narrator, Alaska: A Photographic Excursion.
New Second Edition - with over forty new images!
Winner of a Benjamin Franklin Award
"Alaska truly lives up to its billing as the Great Land, a landscape so vast and varied that it seems beyond the scale of human comprehension. After spending a combined six decades here, Mark and I have figured one thing out: we are never going to be able to show it all. Our offering is a mere sampler of the riches in this state, one we hope will bring you back, wanting more. All told, it is a dazzling journey." - Nick Jans, Narrator, Alaska: A Photographic Excursion.
160 pages, Paperback
First published January 7, 2000
1 person is currently reading
109 people want to read
About the author
Mark Kelley
41 books5 followersAward-winning Alaskan photographer Mark Kelley has built his entire career around the place he calls home-Alaska. Mark has been photographing the places and faces of his state for the past forty years. A true Alaskan ambassador, Mark knows when to be where for Alaska to reveal itself in the next photograph. Mark’s images have been reproduced as art prints and in books and calendars, collected by locals and visitors as important reminders of this great place of awe and wonder.
Mark has worked on assignment for UNESCO and Jaeger-LeCoultre, National Geographic Adventure Magazine, Outside, Alaska Magazine, the New York Times, Washington Post, Boy’s Life and USA Today. His images have appeared in National Wildlife, Sunset, National Geographic Adventure, National Geographic Traveler, National Geographic World, Alaska Magazine, Outside, Alaska Airlines, Time For Kids, Sierra, Runner’s World, Travel & Leisure, Boy’s Life, USA, and the Washington Post, among others. Mark Kelley’s images have appeared on the covers of more than two hundred publications.
Mark has published twelve photo books with over a quarter million copies sold. Mark’s latest book “Once Upon Alaska”, is a Mom’s Choice Awards® Gold Recipient and a Foreword’s 2013 Book of the Year Finalist. Mark’s books “Glacier Bay National Park: Alaska”, “Alaska’s Tracy Arm and Sawyer Glaciers”, and “Alaska: A Photographic Excursion” were awarded a Benjamin Franklin Award by The Independent Book Publishers Association in 2001, 2006, and 2008, respectively. Mark Kelley produces two annual calendars, with over 200,000 calendars sold to date, as well as note cards, postcards, bookmarks, and individually signed prints.
Mark Kelley is a silver winner in the Graphis Photography Annual 2015 Contest and a winner in the 72nd Annual Picture of the Year International Competition, Natural History Category-Reportage Division. He is a North American Nature Photography Association Showcase winner and a recipient of the Daniel Housberg Wilderness Image Award for Excellence in Still Photography from the Alaska Conservation Foundation. Mark placed first in the 2013 Nature’s Best Windland Smith Rice Photography Awards—Outdoor Adventure Category and his winning image is now part of the Smithsonian’s permanent collection. In 2014 and 2013 Mark received an “Award of Excellence” from Communications Arts, the leading trade journal for visual communications. Mark’s work in journalism has been recognized by the Alaska Press Club, the National Press Photographers Association, and the Society of Professional Journalists.
“As a kid in Buffalo, New York, I always wondered what it would be like to encounter a whale,” says Mark, “I moved north and in 1978 graduated from the University of Alaska with a journalism degree.” Mark worked as a photojournalist for the Juneau Empire, Juneau’s only daily newspaper, for over thirteen years before leaving to pursue a full-time career in freelance photography and publishing in 1993.
Mark has lived in Alaska for more than 40 years. He resides in Juneau where he and his wife, Jan, raised their two sons, Gabe and Owen.
Mark has worked on assignment for UNESCO and Jaeger-LeCoultre, National Geographic Adventure Magazine, Outside, Alaska Magazine, the New York Times, Washington Post, Boy’s Life and USA Today. His images have appeared in National Wildlife, Sunset, National Geographic Adventure, National Geographic Traveler, National Geographic World, Alaska Magazine, Outside, Alaska Airlines, Time For Kids, Sierra, Runner’s World, Travel & Leisure, Boy’s Life, USA, and the Washington Post, among others. Mark Kelley’s images have appeared on the covers of more than two hundred publications.
Mark has published twelve photo books with over a quarter million copies sold. Mark’s latest book “Once Upon Alaska”, is a Mom’s Choice Awards® Gold Recipient and a Foreword’s 2013 Book of the Year Finalist. Mark’s books “Glacier Bay National Park: Alaska”, “Alaska’s Tracy Arm and Sawyer Glaciers”, and “Alaska: A Photographic Excursion” were awarded a Benjamin Franklin Award by The Independent Book Publishers Association in 2001, 2006, and 2008, respectively. Mark Kelley produces two annual calendars, with over 200,000 calendars sold to date, as well as note cards, postcards, bookmarks, and individually signed prints.
Mark Kelley is a silver winner in the Graphis Photography Annual 2015 Contest and a winner in the 72nd Annual Picture of the Year International Competition, Natural History Category-Reportage Division. He is a North American Nature Photography Association Showcase winner and a recipient of the Daniel Housberg Wilderness Image Award for Excellence in Still Photography from the Alaska Conservation Foundation. Mark placed first in the 2013 Nature’s Best Windland Smith Rice Photography Awards—Outdoor Adventure Category and his winning image is now part of the Smithsonian’s permanent collection. In 2014 and 2013 Mark received an “Award of Excellence” from Communications Arts, the leading trade journal for visual communications. Mark’s work in journalism has been recognized by the Alaska Press Club, the National Press Photographers Association, and the Society of Professional Journalists.
“As a kid in Buffalo, New York, I always wondered what it would be like to encounter a whale,” says Mark, “I moved north and in 1978 graduated from the University of Alaska with a journalism degree.” Mark worked as a photojournalist for the Juneau Empire, Juneau’s only daily newspaper, for over thirteen years before leaving to pursue a full-time career in freelance photography and publishing in 1993.
Mark has lived in Alaska for more than 40 years. He resides in Juneau where he and his wife, Jan, raised their two sons, Gabe and Owen.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
July 5, 2024
I've been a serious photographer for over 60 years and found this book on board my recent cruise to Alaska (and my 50th state). Plus, I'm a sucker for autographed works so grabbed it up and packed it carefully, looking forward to getting into it upon my return to Florida. And while I got some pretty good scenic and people shots as we were blessed by fantastic weather, the ones that cannot compare with those in this book are the ones of wildlife - especially the one of a tourist group looking off into the distance for bears and a mother bear with a salmon in her mouth and two cubs zip around the group behind them and into the woods. To get great wildlife shots really takes some timing, knowledge and a touch of luck. So I got a few but not anywhere comparable to the great ones here.
A welcome surprise was that, although the photos are the star of the show, the narration was well done - flows well and very informative on the nature (literally and figuratively) of Alaska and the history of the various cities and parks. Great to relive the trip through a nice work.
Really a great book so if you are going or have been, you will find this a worthy addition to your library!
A welcome surprise was that, although the photos are the star of the show, the narration was well done - flows well and very informative on the nature (literally and figuratively) of Alaska and the history of the various cities and parks. Great to relive the trip through a nice work.
Really a great book so if you are going or have been, you will find this a worthy addition to your library!
March 5, 2025
This was lovely and I liked that there were paragraphs of descriptions for all of the different places. However, I was hoping for more nature and less people (and I didn't think we needed multiple pictures of the pipeline? Like, no thanks).
June 15, 2021
There is text in this book, at the beginning of every chapter, but the reader of this book would be forgiven for not realizing this immediately and for not paying much attention to this book. What is most notable about this book is the absolutely stunning photography. I must admit that I am not much of a photographer, and have never had the skill that others have in taking a camera and finding the world's beauty with it and conveying it and framing it, but I can and do appreciate good photography from others and this book delivers in spades on that front. It cannot be emphasized enough that this book shows the full glory that is on display when looking at creation with great equipment and immense skill at photography. It is hard not to think of Alaska as beautiful, certainly when viewing photography like this, which is truly awe-inspiring. If the text of the book comes off as distinctly second-rate in comparison with the photography, that is something that is inherent in the structure of the book, which makes the photographer the author and merely notes the person who provided the inessential text of the work.
This book is a relatively short one at about 150 pages or so, although the pages are large ones and most of those pages are full of gorgeous and large photographs. This is a book that simply belongs on a coffee table for an appreciative reading audience of guests. I am not sure how many coffee tables have this book, but hopefully this book is appreciated wherever it happens to be. This book is divided into six chapters, each of them focusing on a different aspect of Alaska's beauty. The first chapter focuses on Alaska's stark and gorgeous mountains, including Denali (McKinley) and the coastal range. After that there is a chapter on Alaska's rivers and lakes, including the fish in them. This is followed by a chapter that looks at Alaska's tundra. Then there is a chapter that focuses on the sea and coastal areas of Alaska, of which there are many. This is followed by a chapter that contains lots of photographs of forests, again, something that Alaska has a lot of. Finally, the last chapter of the book looks at some of Alaska's islands. Each chapter begins with some text before the main contents of the book, its photographs, are displayed.
In reading this book there is only one thing about this book that really bugged me. I'm not sure if this will bother everyone, but as a reader I was bothered by the fact that over and over again the photographer notes his photographs in captions in places that are not particularly accessible to people. The majority of this book is taken from photographs of a few places during a narrow range of time (mostly in the short Alaskan summer), and of those few places that get listed over and over again, the vast majority of them are national parks and refuges that are not very easily accessible to ordinary mere mortals like those people reading the book. Similarly, the book is not very detailed in terms of the exact places where the photos are being taken, so as to discourage people from seeking the same views from themselves. This is a great book, to be sure, but it's a book that one would be hard pressed to replicate in terms of one's own travels. Whether or not that bothers the reader is something that each reader of this book, and each traveler to Alaska, has to figure out for themselves.
This book is a relatively short one at about 150 pages or so, although the pages are large ones and most of those pages are full of gorgeous and large photographs. This is a book that simply belongs on a coffee table for an appreciative reading audience of guests. I am not sure how many coffee tables have this book, but hopefully this book is appreciated wherever it happens to be. This book is divided into six chapters, each of them focusing on a different aspect of Alaska's beauty. The first chapter focuses on Alaska's stark and gorgeous mountains, including Denali (McKinley) and the coastal range. After that there is a chapter on Alaska's rivers and lakes, including the fish in them. This is followed by a chapter that looks at Alaska's tundra. Then there is a chapter that focuses on the sea and coastal areas of Alaska, of which there are many. This is followed by a chapter that contains lots of photographs of forests, again, something that Alaska has a lot of. Finally, the last chapter of the book looks at some of Alaska's islands. Each chapter begins with some text before the main contents of the book, its photographs, are displayed.
In reading this book there is only one thing about this book that really bugged me. I'm not sure if this will bother everyone, but as a reader I was bothered by the fact that over and over again the photographer notes his photographs in captions in places that are not particularly accessible to people. The majority of this book is taken from photographs of a few places during a narrow range of time (mostly in the short Alaskan summer), and of those few places that get listed over and over again, the vast majority of them are national parks and refuges that are not very easily accessible to ordinary mere mortals like those people reading the book. Similarly, the book is not very detailed in terms of the exact places where the photos are being taken, so as to discourage people from seeking the same views from themselves. This is a great book, to be sure, but it's a book that one would be hard pressed to replicate in terms of one's own travels. Whether or not that bothers the reader is something that each reader of this book, and each traveler to Alaska, has to figure out for themselves.
August 20, 2022
Beautiful photos
October 17, 2024
4.5 stars - makes me want to immediately book another trip
July 9, 2016
Wonderful. Wish I could travel there again.
July 13, 2019
Heavily favors South-east Alaska - probably because Kelley lives there and has more pictures of it... but Jans's narration makes up for any "failing" of inclusion. Lovely book.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews