Chasing Clouds After Work

Thursday, April 6, 2017

On Your Way

We have been having some awesome weather here in NC for the past few days...but unfortunately, I've been stuck at work or in training for most of the great weather.  Looking ahead to the weekend, Saturday and Sunday were looking mostly clear which normally doesn't work very well for photographs.  With that in mind, and the fact that Toni would be in class tonight, I decided to go and chase clouds after I got off of work.  I didn't have a lot of travel time to play with, so I needed something close.  I figured that the best way to take advantage of the clouds was to go to Pilot Mountain, which was only about a 40 minute drive from home.

I looked at the weather, and the clouds looked to be holding pretty steady, which was great.  I was looking at some awesome clouds passing over right at the moment.  The temperature was dropping, but that wasn't my primary concern.  I was kind of surprised to see the wind forecast in Pinnacle with sustained winds of 20mph and gusts around 40mph!!  That will make getting a sharp picture quite difficult, but it might motivate the clouds through the sky and give me a chance for some long exposure work.  I grabbed dinner real quick and headed down the road.

When I got to the park, I quickly unloaded the camera, and was very happy that I brought my jacket as the wind was rather frigid!  I made my way down the rather short trail with the hopes that I would be alone at the summit.  I was going to find that perfect composition, and work through the stages of the golden hour until the sun set behind me.  The clouds to the West were spectacular, but there was nothing that I could use as a foreground that would stay still long enough for a picture...plus I wanted the summit to be the focal point of the pictures this time.  The clouds to the East, were a little less spectacular, but they were at least present.  That was what I had to work with, and as I worked my way to the summit, I was passed by a group of three teens.  Oh goody, I'm going to have to share the overlook with loud folks.  Well, the wind and the cold were too much for them, and they left almost at the same time I arrived.

High Top Fade

I took stock in what I had to work with.  The wind was fierce, and I knew I was going to have to brace the camera in order to get sharp pictures.  I threaded the tripod through the fence and got it wedged in nice and tight.  The fence was nice and sturdy, so I wasn't worried about vibrations.  I got the tripod set up perfectly level in case I decided to do any panoramas, and then pulled the camera out.  Having worked this location many times in the past, I figured that I would just go with my 24-70mm lens for simplicity.  I rarely go wider than that, and this way, I could get a little bit into the intimate views if I decided to go that route.  I started off with a polarizer, but with the sun positioned as it was, I wasn't getting any effect with the filter so it was removed after the first couple of shots.

The clouds were nice here, but not quite like what I was seeing all around me.  The thought came to me to do a stitched panorama to include the clouds to either side, but looking at the scene, it would look very unbalanced, and the clouds would become more of a distraction than anything else.  I decided to stick with single shots.  However, with the clouds starting to move away from me, toward the summit, I figured that now was as good a time as any to try a long exposure.  The 30 second exposure is the opening piece to this entry and was shot with my 10-Stop filter.

The clouds worked out very well, but I was having a hard time getting the actual mountains to light up all together.  So, I decided to embrace the shadows and have all of the focal points in this shot covered in shadows, with the sun actually lighting up the flatlands.  It was a little different of an approach, but with the drama in the light clouds, the shadowed anchors really pulls the image together.  Conversely, in the second image, I was able to get all the mountains illuminated by the sun, but the white clouds were less of a major feature, so the light landscape balanced better with the blue sky.  Hey, we have to work with what nature provides, and sometimes it is better to go along with it.

I stayed out on that overlook for about an hour until I had had enough.  I was getting tossed around in the wind, and I was really starting to wonder if my shots were going to be sharp or not.  I wanted to wait for the sunset, but it seemed that the longer I waited, the less clouds were around the summit.  With sunset another hour away, I really didn't want to fight the wind any longer.  I tucked my tail between my legs and packed the camera back up.  I was hoping to find a good vantage point to capture the sunset to the West that was shaping up to be rather photogenic.  However, everything that I could use in a composition in this direction was moving too much to be usable.  I got in the truck and headed back to the house, still searching.  Unfortunately, I found nothing, but did get to see the sunset, and I greatly enjoyed it!

Off in the Distance

Once I got home, the real fun started.  I started to go through the pictures, and found five that I really liked.  I worked on them for a bit and started to realize that the five I liked were very closely related.  I whittled them down to two that I liked, but still wanted to look at the others.  I had done some of the shooting with black and white in mind since the sky was a nice deep blue and the clouds were very light.  This usually makes for a really good mono conversion when I apply my red filter to the image.  I went back to the others and looked at them in black and white....well, I have to admit, they looked pretty dang good.  I had another two images that I really liked to add to the mix.  I chose to only release the converted ones as black and white images, not because the color versions were not good, but because I thought that the other color pictures were better, and these lent themselves to black and white much better than color.

Above All Else

I'm hoping that I can continue to have skies like this occasionally when I can dedicate a full day to photography.  I would have loved to have seen these skies above the Appalachian Mountains.  Had I been able to get there in time, I would have made the trip, but I would have had only about 30 minutes to work with once I got there, and that just wasn't worth the time investment.  I'll cross my fingers for this weekend though!

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!

Ringing in the New Year at Pilot Mountain

Sunday, January 1, 2017

Pinnacle Beneath the Heavens

It has been since last year that I went out on a Trek.  Wow, that is a very long time indeed!  Well, I don't guess it was that long, but it has been a very long time since I've been to Pilot Mountain, possibly three or more years now.  Since it is one of the most iconic locations here in the Piedmont of NC, I don't do a lot with it photographically.  I'm sure it has all been shot before at one time or another.  However, I have been wanting to try a couple of things there for a while now.  The main thing that I wanted to try was doing a long exposure with the knob as the anchor.  I've intended to do that on a number of occasions now, but the conditions just haven't quite worked out for me.

As last year came to a close, I was looking at the weather, and noted that the clouds would be low, and there should be pretty decent cloud cover as well.  That was the recipe for what I was looking for, so I decided to get up and be at the park at 8am when they opened the gates.  With a little bit of usable light happening before that time, I decided that I would also try another location right at sunrise to maybe increase my chances of a good day behind the camera.  I chose to go to Historic Bethabara first, right at the blue hour.  My intention was to get some long exposures with the predawn sky above some of the rooflines of the buildings.

Well, I got to Bethabara right when I planned, but the sky was rather drab and there was very little motion in it at all.  Added to that were the street lights that were all over the property and I decided that this was not going to pan out.  I went ahead and got in the truck and headed out to Pilot Mountain hoping that I would at least get the opportunity to pull the camera out of the bag.

I got there before all of the gates were even opened up, and I watched as the clouds changed around, and gave me hope, and then took my hope away.  They were much thinner than I was hoping for and the sun was actually shining through which was not a good thing.  Based on how the overlook for the knob was positioned, I was going to be shooting nearly into the sun for most of the compositions I was looking for.  I stuck around though, and went on up to the summit when the gate was open.  I got to the parking lot, and saw that the sky was very interesting in the opposite direction from the knob.  There wasn't much going on facing the knob, so I decided to look for something that I could use to showcase the sky.

Just Before Eternity

As it happened, there was a small overlook just to the side of the parking lot.  I went out to see what was there.  For the most part, there was flat landscape that reached for miles and miles.  However, to the right of the overlook there was a small outcropping with a couple of trees on it, with a small path.  I decided to stay elevated and not hop the fence to get to the path.  I fitted my 24-70mm lens and a color intensifying polarizer and started to work the shot.  I wasn't happy with the composition as I shot in landscape orientation.  I started looking at things critically, and decided that the sky was the main player, and I just needed that little section of outcropping, not the flat landscape.  I flipped the camera on its side and recomposed.  That was what I was looking for!  I dialed in the polarizer, and waited for the wind to slow a little bit.  I grabbed several different variations on this composition before deciding that the sky was breaking up too much to continue.

I went ahead and worked my way along the trail to the summit and paid attention to different compositions that I could work.  I stopped at a couple of the little overlooks and looked to see what I could do while the sun wasn't really cooperating.  One of the areas allowed a really cool view of the knob, but it was very much backlit with a bright sky behind it.  The clouds really weren't giving me any breaks today!

Evergreen Veins

I was faced with a difficult exposure, but I was getting more and more familiar with what my camera was actually capable of capturing.  I went ahead and fitted my 70-200mm lens with the deep lens hood, and positioned between two slats in the fence so as to avoid the tree that was hanging low above me.  I was having a hard time getting the composition right, until I flipped the camera over and composed in portrait orientation.  Not quite sure why, but I was really liking the vertical perspective today.  I grabbed a line of evergreen trees that lead up to the knob and composed around that leading line.  Since I was basically shooting into the sun, I chose to skip any filters for fear of ghosting.  I even used my hat off to the right side to shield the front element while I shot.  I purposely exposed for the sky and left most of the landscape in the shadows.  This was a conscious decision, as I could have used an ND grad filter.  Had I done that, I would have lost valuable exposure on the knob, which I needed to be properly exposed.

Looking at the histogram after I made the shot, I saw that there was actually plenty of information available to me.  There was no clipping on either end of the spectrum.  The LCD image looked very dark, and the sky was very bright, but the pixels were all there, and ready to be massaged in Lightroom.  I wouldn't know what I had until I got home though.

Working off of this recent exposure knowledge, I moved on to the knob where the lighting was not much better.  I went ahead and swapped in my 16-35mm lens so that I could get a little more flexibility with my composition.  My intention was that I would be adding filters, and didn't want any vignetting on the wide end of my 24-70mm lens.  As it turned out, the 16-35mm worked wonderfully, and allowed me to capture several different compositions from what I was used to getting in the past.

The opening photo to this blog was shot at 27mm, which was a very comfortable focal length for that lens, and I could have added another filter if needed.  Again, my plan was to shoot long exposures up here.  However, the weather wasn't going to cooperate with me.  There was a slight breeze at my level, but there was little to no movement in the sky.  I would have to have about a 3 minute exposure to get the movement that I wanted, and that was just too long.  I decided to shoot with regular exposures and try to eek out as much detail as I could in both the mountain and the sky.  I still was hesitant to use one of my ND grads because I wanted the knob to stay as bright as possible.  As with the previous exposure, I just made sure that I had enough pixel information to allow me to massage the image in Lightroom.

Pinnacle Beneath the Heavens in B&W

When I was actually doing my editing of this opening image, I thought that it might look pretty good as a monochrome image, so I did a quick conversion.  I saw a lot of promise in it, and started to work on the tones.  In the end, I ended up really liking both the color and the B&W versions here.  There is a lot of mood to these pictures which my previous Pilot Mountain shots have always lacked.  Maybe it was due to the time of day since I have never shot the knob in the morning before.

Happy with the grand landscape shot, I decided to move back to my 70-200mm lens for an approach I had not done before.  I wanted to really get into the personal space of this mountain today.  Again, I decided to skip any filters to avoid any ghosting with this lens.  For me, it feels very strange to shoot without a polarizer attached!

The Jagged Edge

Trying to make use of the rising sun which should have been covered, I chose to shoot the side that was being lit.  I would have rather gotten the other side, and showcased the mountains in the background, but I needed the light more than the supporting elements.  I worked on composing an image that made sense, which was difficult to do with the major part of the image being the foreground.

What I found was that the bare trees were allowing the trail to the knob to be exposed.  That was going to be my leading line, through the foreground.  The distant landscape and the sky all blended together to make the background.  Thanks to the trail, the actual knob became the mid ground of this shot.  The trick was going to be the exposure.  Again, the histogram showed that I had captured all the detail that I would need.  It was just going to be up to the processing at this point.

The Jagged Edge in B&W

I was very lucky with my exposures.  I took some chances and didn't stay in my comfort zone.  I was rewarded when I started to process the digital negatives.  While I would have much preferred a little softer appearance, the (essentially) backlit mountain turned out really well.  There was no shortage of detail in the forested parts, and like the sun aged skin of an old farm hand, the rocks had a ton of texture to them.  I was very happy with the outcome.  I ended up with 48 frames in the hour and a half that I was there, which isn't bad considering many of those were bracketed attempts to get the exposure correct.

I was considering returning to shoot it again at sunset, but sadly, there is a lot of rain falling right now, and the sky is just featureless.  I'll get back out there again for my long exposure attempts, but for now, I'll be happy knowing that I just got the first Trek of 2017 under my belt!

Happy New Year!!!!!!

Standing on an Icy Slab

February 16, 2014

The weather lately has made it rather difficult for me to get out and do much in the way of photography.  We have been hit by a winter storm that dumped about 10 inches of snow and ice which looked pretty, but made travel difficult, and also introduced new chores at home...namely shoveling the driveway.  With several days of that behind me, it was time to start looking at the weather for a good sky.  I was rather disappointed that when the snow was over, we transitioned immediately to sunny skies with no visual interest whatsoever.  On my last day off before having to go back to work, the forecast promised cloudy skies up until about lunch time.  that was enough time for me to get out and hunt some targets for my camera.

I woke up nice and early, planning on heading out to Pilot Mountain, well....at least the overlook off of US 52.  I had worked that view several time before and have enjoyed playing with the light trails.  Today, however, I wanted to try out my 10 Stop ND filter and see what kind of movement I could record in the sky.  It was an experiment more than anything.  My secondary plan was to take advantage of the overcast and seek out some barns, or old cars along the roadside until it was time to get home and wash the salt off of the truck.

This was taken after all the color had left the sky

I arrived at the overlook at about 6am, an hour before sunrise and got things set up as quickly as I could.  I knew that I was going to need my 70-200mm lens to get the reach that I needed, so I wasted no time trying out different lenses for compositions.  I found my spot and composed the image the best I could in the dark.  I had to be very careful though because I was standing on some very packed snow with an icy glaze.  Nothing like keeping on your toes with the fear of slipping and falling.

I started out with several minutes worth of exposures, but things were still rather dark and flat except for the light trails.  I was actually finding that I had very little hope for this shoot because my cloudy skies had pretty much gone away and I was left with just a few passing puffs.  I continued on in spite of this setback though.  As the sun started to come up, I could tell that what clouds were in the sky were blocking the color and leaving me with very little to work with.  However, there were some clouds working their way into the picture.  In the name of experimentation, I grabbed my 10 stop filter and slid it in the holder.  I did some quick approximations based on my current exposure and found that 7.5 minutes should work out for keeping the proper exposure with the dark filter in place.  I couldn't even see through the lens at this point, so I just clicked the shutter and waited to see what happened.

The Scenic Route

Much to my happiness, early on with that exposure the sun popped out from the clouds behind me and lit the clouds in front of me with a nice warm hue.  I wasn't real sure how this would render in the camera since I have very little experience with this type of filter.  When the full exposure ticked past, I was pleasantly surprised that the color that was recorded was actually quite a bit more intense than what I saw in reality.  The image was slightly underexposed (due to an oversight with my aperture), but it seemed to work out very well.  What you see here is not a true representation of what my eyes saw, but it is what was captured by the camera, and represents what my intention was behind the image design.  I see areas for improvement with the long exposures, but I really do see some great potential when working with cloudy skies.

The Scenic Route in B&W

More out of curiosity than anything, I made a conversion over to monochrome with this image.  I applied some tweaking to the color channels  to make sure that there was sufficient tonal separation and found that the resulting image actually was pretty strong without the color ingredient.  A quick check with Toni and she liked this one more than the color one...so here it is!  Whether in color or black and white, I can still feel the hard packed snow beneath my feet.

As I was taking a few last exposures, that were getting into the 30 second rang, I decided that even with the dense filter, I was falling victim to the daylight more than I wanted to.  It was time to move on to something else.  Fortunately, while I was making these long exposures, I had been paying attention to what was going on around me.  I had been watching the clouds to my right move across the sky just on the other side of a fence.  I went ahead and grabbed the camera and started to slowly walk over to the other side of the parking lot.  As I was about to step down from the curb, I saw what looked like standing water about two feet into the driveway.  As cold as it was, I knew better than to step down without testing it first.  Yep...just as I thought...black ice.  Having slipped on ice before and broken a camera and lens, I was a little more cautious this time.  I found a place where I could step down a little more safely and walked across the driveway.  Once at the other side, I had a similar problem, and had to find an access point I could safely get up on the curb at.

I made my way to the fence and set things up.  I removed the 10 stop filter and checked my composition. I was able to get a little bit of the sky and a nice tree with a collapsed house at the base using my 70-200mm.  That just wasn't the composition I was seeing at the time though.  I was running out of time based on how the light was changing in the clouds, but I wanted a different composition so I slapped the 24-70mm lens on with a polarizer.  I checked the exposure and found that there was too much latitude for me to get a proper exposure.  I needed to add an ND Grad filter, and it needed to be quick!

With my now numb fingers I got my adapter ring and started to try and thread it on the front of the polarizer.  Imagine screwing a ring on another ring that rotates freely while not having any fine motor skills.  Not the easiest course of action, but I was determined to get this picture.  The clouds looked amazing, and I had to make my finger work just long enough to press the shutter button.

Crisp Country Air

With just minutes left to spare, I was able to crank off several exposures which captured the muted yellows in the clouds against the deep blue of the sky.  I was very lucky that in addition to a really great tree as a foreground anchor point, I had the collapsed house, as well as a barn on the ridge beyond.  Everything really flowed well in this picture, and the colors were tremendous!

Crisp Country Air in B&W

While I was looking at the image, my mind started to assign tonal values to the colors, and I started to see it in monochrome.  A couple of button pushes later with some tonal tweaks, I found myself looking at a very interesting black and white image.  I was sold on this one, and even Toni liked it better than the color version.

Shortly after taking that shot, I decided that the clouds had lost their color, and were even starting to break up even more than they had been.  It was time to pack up and move on to something else.  I started out looking for some more barns, but quickly found that the lighting was too harsh for that.  I changed the plan and looked for some more landscapes, but could find nothing that worked with the existing lighting.  After a couple of hours searching, I threw in the towel and headed home to get the trucks cleaned up for the upcoming week ahead.