Rain on the Blue Ridge Parkway

Saturday, October 29, 2017

Falling Rain

Toni and i decided to do a little impromptu trip to the mountains for the weekend.  The goal wasn't photography, but since we were there, might as well bring the camera right?  Well, we brought the camera and hoped for the best.  The clouds were excellent all the way up to the mountains, but as we got past Wilkesboro, the clouds got thicker and the rain started to fall.  We decided to hop on the Blue Ridge Parkway to see if the rain would subside long enough to get some pictures.

Once we entered, we were greeted by some pretty dense fog which I didn't mind at all.  The colors looked nice, and I was pretty hopeful for what I would be able to capture.  As I got into the mindset of looking for foggy compositions, the fog broke.  Now it was starting to mist, which was not too big of a deal.  I changed gears and looked for some woodland isolations that I could shoot that would show the color.  As I started to get into tune with that type of composition, the rain got harder.  Well, I can't work in that kind of rain, so I turned around.  

We entered fog again along with the rain, and then the fog started to lift, and the rain slacked off a little bit.  We happened to be coming around a curve and there was a really nice red tree framed by a fence that caught both of our eyes.  I went ahead and pulled the 4Runner off to the side of the road and looked at the scene closer.  Toni was dead set that she wanted the fence to be the main leading line into the tree, and I could see that composition working nicely.  I had a bit of curiosity about using the road itself as an "S curve" through the scene though.

I crossed the road (the answer to Why did the photographer cross the road?) to check things out.  I could see a good bit of potential here, and decided to get the camera.  The mist was getting heavier so I knew that I was going to need to get my long lens because it has the deepest hood to shield the lens.  This hood that was so necessary to the protection of the lens prevented me from using any filters.  The bit of glare that a polarizer would have removed wasn't worth fighting the water on the lens, so I wasn't stressing it.

I got everything set up and found my position.  I actually shot this scene at 135mm which was actually pretty narrow for a landscape shot, but it captured everything that I wanted in the shot.  I played with the composition a little bit, and managed to fire off three shots before the rain started to fall in earnest once again.  It was too much for me to subject the camera to since I didn't have my foul weather gear out and ready.  I went ahead and packed everything back up and got back in the truck.  I was looking for some more compositions, but the weather just wasn't going to work out.  I decided to wait until tomorrow.

Well, tomorrow came and while the sky was phenomenal, and the lighting was perfect, I just wasn't really motivated to shoot any more.  I had other things that needed to be done back at home, and I just wasn't feeling creative at all.  Instead of fighting it and trying to make photographs, we just headed home and called it a day.

Sometimes, the artists just isn't ready to create.  That is part of it, and I would have liked to have captured some of the scenes that were going around in my head, but the images would have looked forced, and I wouldn't have been happy with them.  As it turned out though, one of the three that I shot on Saturday actually turned out quite well.  For not going out there to make photographs, coming home with one picture is a resounding success!