Why is Alaska So Beautiful? A scientific examination of angles, warm light and CMB.

If you're expecting a serious post, just close the window now and read something else.

Abstract: Alaska is beautiful because it is. It is mountains and rivers and lakes and snow and big mammals and alpine forest and glaciers and just... seemingly unspoiled.

Introduction: Alaska spends an awful lot of time in twilight. That part of the day where everything seems that much more pretty than it really is. By virtue of its latitude, the sun doesn't really get very high and when it is rising or setting, it travels very, very obliquely. You get a long twilight period... that soft, dappled, warm light that photographers love.

Hypothesis: Alaska is beautiful because of twilight.

Apparatus: Photos of Cameron Michael Browning, sourced from personal archives and/or facebook.

Discussion: Cam is an average looking person with the sort of personality that is its own contraceptive device. He is appropriate for testing this hypothesis because I haven't made fun of him for over a fortnight.

Figure 1 is a photo of Cam under flash photography. It's an appropriate substitute to midday sun as it mimics the harsh light of the sun high, somewhere in the middle of the day. It's especially useful because it's clear that his face is unprepared for this, it responds less well than the girl's next to him who has a bit of makeup on, obviously to counter looking like a washed up drug fiend.

Figure 1: I will present this without further comment.

Figure 2 highlights the importance of a soft and oblique light source. Taken at twilight, it's infinitely better than figure one... but perhaps that's only because he's looking the other direction.

Figure 2: Cam at twilight looking in the opposite direction. Already less repulsive.

In the interest of rigorously testing my hypothesis, let's also investigate a photo of Cam looking the otherway but under the midday sun, simply to see if it's twilight or his pose that makes Figure 2 subjectively more appealing. Figure 3 shows Cam at 2pm on a Saturday violently vomiting off the back of a boat in Longreach Bay. Ladies, form an orderly queue.

Figure 3: Hard to know what to make of this, except to laugh at him chumming the waters.

The obvious final test is Cam looking at the camera at twilight (Figure 4). Being a man of science though, I'm prepared to state that in my opinion the results of this particular photo are anomalous, should be discarded and not considered when forming any conclusions as to why Alaska is beautiful.

Figure 4: Cam looking at the camera, at twilight. This experiment shows results that are anomalous to a pre-determined conclusion and has been summarily discarded.

Conclusion: Hypothesis is void. Alaska is beautiful because Browning isn't in it.

Further reading: https://www.facebook.com/cam.browning