I was in my hometown in Alaska last weekend and got a chance to walk around Totem Bight, a recreation of a longhouse and poles done by artists hired by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s and 1940s. When I was a child, we played hide and seek in the longhouse, which in retrospect was pretty disrespectful, but I grew up loving the art of those Native American carvers. And my father and his friends would scare us with tales of how the kushtaka would get us if we didn't behave. So when I go back to Ketchikan, I try to get out to the bight to admire the artists' work and see how the old kushtaka pole is doing as it lies in the forest, going back whence it came. These were all taken with a Nikkor 55-200mm VR II, which is great for travel because it is so small and takes 52mm filters. The VR means I can hand hold up to about 80mm at 1/25th. I often take this lens and a 20mm f3.5 for my D5500 and call it good.
