Weekend Away in Brevard, NC

September 30, through October 2, 2016

Pastels in the Morning

It has been over nine months since Toni and I have taken a vacation and really gotten away from Winston Salem.  With the various headaches that we had going on at work, we decided that it was probably a good time to skip town and explore a little.  The question was....where to go?  Well, we decided to scope out Brevard, NC where we were considering spending our anniversary in January.  It would be a chance to get away and also to spend some time exploring the area and checking out the waterfalls.  We would make a weekend of it.

The weather for the weekend was nearly perfect for the average person, and even for the cyclists out there.  However, with very little cloud cover, it was not going to be that great for photographers.  I wasn't going to be able to do anything with the waterfalls that I was hoping I visit.  That was probably just as well since there was standing room only at most of the falls local to Brevard.  I guess that goes with the season in the mountains.  Even though the leaves were very patchy at best, this is the time when everyone flocks to the mountains.

We arrived on Friday, and went out toward Dupont State Park, but didn't really find much that caught my eye.  For this day, I was looking for barns and old cars more than anything else.  Oddly enough, there were none to be found where we were driving.  After a while the sun went down and it was time to retire to the hotel.

Our day started early on Saturday as we got up in time for the breakfast and then out the door to head to the Blue Ridge Parkway...Graveyard Fields to be exact.  The forecast called for light clouds, and I thought that I might luck out and get a decent sunrise.  Well, I was pushing to get up to the Parkway in time to get set up, but when I got there, the sky was pretty much blank, and the sun was starting to come up.  I was going to abandon the sunrise shot until Toni spotted an area below with some nice low laying clouds.  I quickly pulled off the road and built the camera, using the long lens since there was little chance of wanting to capture much sky.

Blue Ridge Dawn

I was able to get things put together in time to get most of the goody out of this sunrise.  There was not much drama in the sky unfortunately, but I really did like the wisps of fog in the foreground with the clouds in the background.  The sky was not very forgiving so I had to run back to the car and get my ND grads to bring the exposure under control.  Once I fitted the reverse grad, I was able to keep the sky held back so that I could get more detail out of the foreground.  It wasn't the ideal situation, but it was working.

I worked this scene for what seemed like an hour, but I'm pretty sure I was just thinking very fast and it only lasted about 20 minutes or so.  The sun came up very quickly after we got there, and without clouds in the sky, my options dwindled quickly.  However, one of the rules that I try to live by when I am working a scene is to look all around me before I pack it in.  You never know what you might miss as the lighting changes.  This was one of those times.  I was headed to Graveyard Fields hoping to catch some fall color since that is over 5000 ft in elevation.  When I turned around, I saw a little bit of fall color right behind me, and I wanted to grab a quick shot of it, just in case there wasn't more to be had a short distance down the road.

Patches of Color

Normally, I try to compose my images to eliminate sections of road unless I'm using them as leading lines.  This was one time I decided to break that rule.  With the side of the hill coming right to the roadway, it was difficult to crop the road out and still have the picture remain "grounded."  Instead of really trying to get creative with this, I decided to incorporate the road into the composition to balance out the blue sky above.  Since there were no clouds, I wanted only a touch of sky to provide scale, and the road made the sky make sense.  There was also the added benefit of the double yellow line, complementing the warm tones in the vegetation.  While it isn't one of my favorite pictures, there are a lot of aspects of it that I do enjoy.

With the sun climbing, and quickly creating some harsh shadows, it was time to move on down the road to Graveyard Fields.  Once we got there, the lighting was not flattering at all, and I didn't even feel like getting out of the car.  However, the trails below were still in the shadows, and I thought that I might be lucky by trying to use those shadows to work some intimate landscapes.  We grabbed our gear and started out on the trails.  Well, we weren't really equipped for muddy and soggy terrain, so once we saw a long stretch of standing water, we decided that it wasn't going to be worth it.  Back to the car we went.  We continued South on the Parkway without finding anything that would work in the existing light.  It wasn't for not trying though since we actually made it to the end of the Blue Ridge Parkway at milepost 469!

From there, the plan was to take a different route back and search out some barns, or old cars.  That would have been a great plan had the GPS on my phone had a signal.  I couldn't get the map to track us, nor could I get a direction back to the hotel.  To keep from just getting totally lost, we decided to head back up the Parkway and see if the lighting would change any.

Evergreen Family

Ironically, even though we stopped at a few different locations, nothing really worked out at all.  It wasn't until we got back to Graveyard Fields that the clouds started to come back in.  While it was nearly noon at this point, the clouds were providing some nice shadows across the landscape, and I was seeing some potential.  The problem was....there were a ton and a half of people at this location now.  They were filling the parking lot, and lined up along the roadway.  Toni and I had to be creative to get parked, but we managed to get out of the road, reasonably close to where I was needing to set up.

Early Autumn in the High Country

Not really knowing what I was going to be capturing, but knowing I was wanting the clouds, I left my handy 24-70mm lens attached and used a polarizer to add some contrast to the scene.  I started to compose my images making use of whatever I could in the foreground.  This was easier said than done.  I was having to shoot between the brush along the side of the road, and over an embankment that was too steep to walk down safely.  Working very fast, I found several vantage points that I could work with, and a few different compositions that worked from each one.

Relaxing Under the Clouds

For being the worst time of day to shoot in, I was actually having some pretty good luck capturing good light on the landscape.  While not full on fall color (actually, had a hard time finding any color), there was enough variation in the greens to capture the feeling of the early parts of Autumn.  I tried to compose my images along the areas that showed the color change the most.  I worked this area for about a half hour or less.  In that time, I probably got about 15 images.  The clouds kept changing, and just when I thought I had a good one, the shadows would move and light something else up.  I had the opportunity to choose from multiple lighting arrangements for each of my compositions which rarely happens in such a short amount of time.

When I was done with Graveyard Fields, it was time for us to head back to the hotel.  I was wanting to check on Moore's Cove Waterfall on the way back and was hoping that the building clouds would somehow provide enough shade to make waterfall photography possible.  Well, the clouds were not quite as thick as I needed, and the crowds were much too thick to be able to even try a shot of a waterfall.  I'm going to have to come back at a time when there are not nearly as many people there.  There are a bunch of falls that I am hoping to photograph at some point in the near future, but most of them are easy to get to which means I'll likely have to deal with crowds whenever I go.

The rest of the day was spent resting and just hanging around town.  I wasn't really feeling like going out any more after driving around for way too many miles that morning.  I wasn't even really wanting to go out in the morning before we left for home either.  However, Toni was pushing me to head out before breakfast, and looking at the forecast, there was a decent chance for a sunrise shoot to actually work out.  I set my alarm for early o'clock and turned in at a reasonable hour.

Racing Toward the Sunrise

When I woke up (actually before the alarm rang), I was full of renewed hope for a morning of photography.  I had selected three different locations where I could possibly get a good picture or two at sunrise based on Google Maps the night before.  The clouds were still in the forecast, and I wasn't hungry for breakfast yet.  This was going to work!  I loaded up my gear and set out through the Pisgah National Forest well before first light (about 30 minutes earlier than the previous day).  I arrived at the Parkway in plenty of time and the first location I came to seemed to lack any flavor.  I moved on to my second option and was met by three cars already in the parking lot.  Not really wanting to have any company, I moved onto my final choice.  This one was completely empty, and I could see a little bit of potential if the sky turned on like I was hoping for.

I set the camera up with my 70-200mm lens at first because I wasn't really interested in getting a sweeping sky of stars to start with.  I started to work with some long exposures which will pull color out of a nearly dark sky.  I was working in the neighborhood of 2.5 to 5 minute exposures and starting to see some very nice colors with the clouds.  The photo above was shot at 2 minutes, and shows some very nice movement in the clouds which was a welcome effect from the long shutter.  It had been a very, VERY long time since I had seen good clouds for a sunrise.  Not only was there color in the clouds, the sky behind the clouds was still a vivid blue as you looked further away from the rising sun.  To be honest, this might be my favorite picture from the whole weekend.  It has drama, color, depth, and emotion.  I'm sure it will appeal to those that love seeing sunrises too.

Soft Whispers in the Morning

Seeing the sky render in this way prompted me to find other compositions that would show the various colors.  There was not much in the way of distant mountains to really play off of, but I was able to find a few peeking out, that the long lens was able to capture with some detail.  Sunrises are a bit cliche', but every once in a while, I capture one that is exciting and interesting.  This was one of those, and it seemed to last for minutes, and not seconds.  I had plenty of time to work several different compositions.  I even had time to switch over to my 24-70mm lens which was responsible for the opening picture for this entry.

The Valley Beneath the Clouds

Even after the sun came up over the horizon, the clouds were thick enough to block it from the lens.  This enabled me to capture even more photos using the brilliant colors in the sky.  For this particular shot, I was able to get the sun reflecting off of the low clouds in the valley below.  There were even two places where you could see the sun shining through the clouds, onto the clouds below.  Yeah, this was a fun sunrise to work, and made the morning very much worth the getting up early for the second day in a row.

Thinking back to my rule, I did not forget to look around as the light changed.  One the sun was too far up in the sky to work with it directly, I started looking off to the sides.  Something that I had missed in the dark was Looking Glass Rock well off to the right.  I had no idea that this was visible from the Funnel Top Overlook, but there it was...and starting to get hit by the warm rays of the sun.  Picture time!!!

Looking Glass Rock From Funnel Top

The soft, warm light from the low sun has always been a great light source for landscape photography.  Today, it was really working for me.  The way that the hills were, everything by Looking Glass was in the shadows, while the rocky face was bathed in the warm light.  I wasn't in the best position to capture this landmark, but I was going to make due.  I fit my 70-200mm lens once again, and used an intensifying polarizer to grab the warm tones.  I worked myself on the side of the hill, right at the edge of solid footing to allow just a hint of the close in vegetation to be used as a foreground on the lower right.  The clouds were still in the sunrise mode, and had a good deal of warm light being reflected, which helped to bring the attention to the distant exposed rock.  The texture of the landscape also worked out perfectly with the low sun.  This one was going to look really good based on the negative that I was seeing in the LCD of the camera.

When I was done working on this composition, my fingers were getting numb, and my nose was running pretty heavily.  It was time to head back to the hotel and get some breakfast before heading home.  It was a really good trip with 10 photos out of about 90 taken that I feel are good enough to keep.  I'll be updating the Landscape Gallery here in a bit to showcase a few of these new ones.

I would like to say that this picture is from after two days of early morning sunrises, but I can't.  This was snapped on the way out to Brevard on Friday.  Yeah, it has been that kind of week...for both Toni and myself.  It was nice to get away, and we have decided that we are now looking at going to Natural Bridge in Virginia for our anniversary.  I'll be coming back to Brevard another time for some waterfall pictures, but we don't really think that it will be worth spending a week out there in the middle of winter.