Pilot Mountain After Work

Wednesday, February 1, 2017

Kissing the Sky

Here we are in February already.  This year is flying by, isn't it?  My schedule has been a little hectic here of late with a new truck coming in.  Because of that, I wasn't able to get out any last weekend for any photography.  My mind wouldn't have been on it anyway.  Now that things are settling down a little bit, I decided that I would try and take advantage of some late day clouds after work.  The trick was, trying to find somewhere I could get to quickly since I would only have about an hour and a half before sunset.  The logical choice was Pilot Mountain since I have been wanting to try some long exposures there for quite some time.

I left work and boogied on down the highway trying to get to the park as quick as I possibly could.  When I arrived, I had about an hour to play with, and the sun was already dropping.  The clouds were not as prevalent as I was hoping for, but there was another issue.  They were doing controlled burns along the Grindstone Trail.  I hadn't heard about this, and today was the first day that they were doing the burns.  The base of the mountain was pretty much covered in smoke, and it was thick as I climbed the mountain.  Instead of turning around, I continued thinking that I might be able to get some interesting pictures with the smoke.

When I arrived at the top, the sky was almost clear, and everything below the mountain was covered in smoke.  I didn't have high hopes for this trip, but I was here, and I wanted to try some pictures.  If nothing else, I was going to practice some panoramas to make it worth my while driving out here.  I quickly hiked out to the summit where I intended to spend most of my time taking advantage of the warm light to the rear, and hopefully finding some clouds in the sky for a background.

Knob Overlook in B&W

At first, I wasn't all that happy with what I was seeing.  The sky was rather blah, and the smoke below on this side was not as deep.  I needed something to make the images pop.  I thought about doing the panoramas, but decided against it due to very little visual interest along the ground level.  I opted to stick with a wide angle lens (16-35mm) and frame the shot as a single exposure.  There was no limit to how long that exposure had to be though.  There was a little bit of movement in the clouds above, so I decided to see what I could work out with my 10-Stop ND filter.  Using that filter, I was able to get my exposure time to around 1:45-2 minutes.  This was enough to show some motion in the sky, even though the clouds weren't moving all that fast.

The light was changing quickly, so I framed a few different shots, one of which was a spur of the moment thing that included the fence I was shooting behind.  I really didn't know how this was going to turn out, but I'm so glad I shot it.  I have never really tried to include the fence on this scale before, and it turned out to provide a great visual balance, and sense of scale.  I also really liked the idea of making this view a black and white shot to bring out the textures of the wood and distant summit.  I was quite pleased with the outcome, and also liked it in it's native color format as well.

Knob Overlook

You would never know from looking at this picture that there was a group of about 10 just to the right of my location.  They were talking and carrying on and made the reality of this photograph a lot different than the final rendition.  The pictures look calming, and rather serene.  That was so not the case when I was shooting the images, but that was the feeling that I was after.  I was starting to really wonder if I was going to get exactly what I was after here since the clouds were actually becoming more interesting to the rear.  The smoke was also quite a bit thicker on the other side of the park.  I started to think that I was going to need to go over there to make the dramatic pictures I was after.

Kissing the Sky in B&W

Drama tends to come in different forms with photography though.  Colors can make drama, movement can make drama, but often times, a deep sky in monochrome makes drama.  Taking both of the pictures that I liked from the overlook, and converting them to black and white, seemed a very natural choice with the blue sky set behind the clouds.  In both cases, the visual tension escalated a little bit.  The color and black and white photos might share a common composition and exposure, but the feel between them is quite a bit different.  This is the power of black and white photography, and why I keep coming back to it time and time again.

But, like I said...the sky was failing me on this side of the park.  I seem to always end up chasing the sky, and the sky behind me was much more interesting that what was over my current subject.  I made the decision to abandon the knob and work to find something on the other side of the park to work with.  As luck would have it, I found myself right back on the small overlook next to the parking lot that I shot for the first time about a month ago.

Cradle the Sun

I found the same tree that I had shot before, and saw that the sun was going to drop right into one of the branches.  That was really cool, so I set up to capture that view.  The low lands below were completely covered in smoke so I didn't have the visual distraction of the cities below to contend with.  This was going to be quite fun...but wasn't going to be a good candidate for a long exposure.  I swapped out my 10-Stop filter, and moved back into manual mode from bulb.  I added a 3 stop ND Reverse Grad to control the sky, and started to frame up my shot.  I started with a nice vertical orientation since I knew that worked well for this particular set of foreground.  I just loved the way that the outcropping was looking like an island in a sea of foam.  Since that drew my interest, I decided to frame it as a horizontal composition as well.  I flopped my camera, and adjusted the filter on the front of the 16-35mm lens.

Sea of Smoke

Unlike the last time that I shot this view, the landscape below was not an issue to contend with.  The elimination of any appreciable detail below lent itself to a really nice horizontal shot.  The clouds had so many layers which added to the visual interest of the shot, and took the emphasis off of the snarl of trees that made up the foreground.  The sun was still perfectly positioned within the tree, which was my ultimate goal with this composition.

The summit closed at 5:45, and it was just a tick past 5:30 at this point.  I kept waiting for the sun to drop beneath the one cloud and light the sky up, but it just would not cooperate.  I kept the camera set up and framed on the tree just in case the sky did something spectacular, but I was running out of time.  Fortunately, I was in the parking lot, not far from the truck.  At 5:40, I decided to call it quits, but not without one last shot before a plane came into the frame.

Wishful Thinking

The title here was pretty much what I was thinking.  I was hoping for a lot of color, but I wasn't going to get that chance and still be able to make it out of the park.  The sky was looking really cool though, and the diagonals of the clouds helped draw the eye past the foreground, into the smoke below.  While I didn't get the image I was after here, I did get a rather dreamy picture that keeps the eyes entertained.  

For only being at the park for an hour, I was doing pretty well for myself.  I had shot about 33 frames, or about a typical roll of film.  Out of those, I decided that I really liked five of them, and two of those, worked very well as black and white images.  Between this trek and my last one to Stone Mountain, I am starting to see a marked increase in my hit rate.  For me, that is very exciting!  For you, it means more pictures to look at from each batch of pictures.  I call that a win win situation!