I started to look at my Alaska photos today and realized why I don't look at them for a few weeks or months after a trip. I am usually overwhelmed by the sheer number of photos (many of them to be deleted) as well as they seem to pale in comparison to the actual scenery. After a few weeks or months, my perspective is much better and I find that I actually find some gems in there. That said, I decided to edit the very first photo I took in Alaska. If you asked me before I took the trip, I would have guessed my first image published would be of the beautiful Alaska landscape but instead it is a photo of Anchorage from my hotel room. The journey to the hotel was long and tiring. Up at 4 am to catch a flight out of Hartford, we didn't get into the room until almost 5 pm (9 pm Eastern Time). To our surprise, it was really hot in the room and it had no air conditioning (I guess we should have been happy that it was sunny out for the first time in weeks).
I opened the drapes and saw this scene. Unfortunately, the angle was bad which caused terrible reflections in the window pane. Because of the lack of air conditioning, the windows were able to be opened just enough to barely stick my D700 out the window. I fired off a burst of 5 shots and hoped that Photoshop's Auto-Align would work miracles (it did). A good start to the trip.