Hanging Rock with the (not so) Little One

Saturday, December 24, 2016

Holiday weekend, cloudy skies, light rain, free time...yep, that means getting the camera out for a day of photography.  My intention was to do some more long exposure shots of the clouds, and I decided that I wanted to hike up to the summit of Hanging Rock to get those shots.  The weather was a crap shoot for that, since there was probably going to be too much in the way of clouds and overcast conditions, but I wanted to give it a try.  I also knew that with the rain, the Lower Cascades would probably be looking pretty good, so that was going to be my plan B.

I had a bit of a treat today as Sierra wanted to join me.  She enjoys Hanging Rock and she hasn't been in some time now.  Well, we needed to correct that quickly.  The only problem was, when I got up, there was a large cell of heavy rains moving across the mountains, reaching down to the house.  This was not going to be a good situation for photography as I am not really equipped to shoot in the driving rain.  I decided to wait the storms out, which actually didn't take too long.  At about 9am or so, I woke Sierra up and had her get ready for the adventure.  She was agreeable with doing the hike up to the summit, although, I probably didn't really explain it all that well to her.  That was probably for the best as she might not have wanted to go with me had she known that the hike was fairly strenuous, and was about 1.3 miles in one direction.  Whether she was ready or not, we were going to have a great time!

All the way out to Hanging Rock, the clouds would try to break up, and then they would go back to full overcast.  There were little pockets of rain as well which dampened my spirits.  I was really starting to think that we would be better off going with the waterfall over the summit hike.  That would have been ok with me, but I was actually looking forward to photographing up high in this weather since I have only ever done it on sunny days, with none, to partial cloud cover.  But I knew that full overcast wouldn't really do me any favors, and would really not be worth the hike.

When we got to the entrance of the park, I looked up into the sky.  I wasn't impressed, but I had seen a great deal of changes on the ride up there.  I made the last minute decision that we would go ahead with the hike, and see what we could see.  I was fully prepared to come away with nothing at all from the summit, and I was ok with that.  Sierra reminded me that the hike was fun even without the pictures (although by the end of the hike, she recanted her statement).  We set off from the parking lot, and made our way down the trail to the summit.

The sky started to break up, and I could see lots of movement in the clouds.  This was excellent, and I was so excited that there might be a good chance for some long exposures today.  We stepped up the pace, and started making the slow climb to the base of the summit.  We pretty much had the park to ourselves which was great.  I guess the occasional sprinkles were keeping folks away...at least for now.

We both huffed and puffed up the stairs leading to the top, and Sierra kept questioning why every time we climbed up, we came back down, before climbing again.  I didn't have an answer except that the trail builders liked teasing us.  Anyway, we finally made it to the top, and worked our way to the summit that is Hanging Rock.  Almost immediately, we were hit with the wind that the trees had been protecting us from.  It was cold and it was powerful.  So much so that I didn't feel comfortable going out on the edge like I have done so many times in the past.  It was no problem though, as the sky in that direction was not all that interesting.  In fact, I was having a hard time finding some interesting areas in the sky to shoot.  Because of that, I decided to work on compositions and find something interesting to shoot if the sky was going to cooperate.

We had been up there for about 15 minutes and I had not found any interest in the sky, and hadn't found a composition that I liked either.  Maybe this was all for nought.  We still had plenty of time to hike back and head out to the waterfall at least.  But I wanted something from summit DANGIT!!!!

Well, I found a composition that I liked, and Sierra found a nice hole in some rocks to protect her from the gale force winds.  I wished I had been so lucky, but I was semi exposed and had no other option.  I was working on a composition with a tree that was shaped like a "7" which was perched atop two other smaller trees.  As I was dialing in the composition to my liking, something magical happened in the sky....

Beneath my Wing

I can't explain it, I'm not sure I even want to try.  But...despite the fact that it was around noon-thirty, there was some faint color in the clouds in the distance.  How could this be?  This was about the worst time to shoot normally because the sun was at its harshest.  The heavy clouds above were blocking that for me, but the sun that was shining through really should not have been quite this warm.  Well, who was I to question the sky.  I had my shot lined up, I waited for as much lull in the wind as I could expect and fired off a shot.  I recomposed slightly to take advantage of the sky and fired off another, and then another.  The trick was getting the wind to calm just enough that the tree would not blur too bad.  Because of this wind, I was unable to consider doing any long exposure work, even though the sky was perfect for it.  Regardless, I was excited about what I was potentially going to get.  It was either going to be amazing, or it was going to be garbage I thought.

Since the sky seemed to be holding the light, I decided to move my camera around and try other compositions.  There are no shortage of funky shaped trees on this patch of rock, from the high winds no doubt.  I had several to choose from, but they required getting in close to isolate them.  That meant that I had my 16-35mm lens fixed to the camera.  Not only did it allow me to get up close to the trees, it allowed me to capture more of the sky than if I had used a long lens.  There was no need in any filters because the lighting was very even, and I wanted as fast a shutter speed as I could manage.

Into Forever

My next composition that I decided on used the same sky, but in addition to the odd shaped tree to the right, I included the trail that Sierra and I had used to get to the summit a while earlier.  It lead to the saddle in the distant mountain range almost perfectly.  This was a little more straightforward of a composition, but I liked it nearly as much as the first one.  The sky was just awesome!

The awesome sky lasted only a bit longer before it became drab again.  With the relentless winds pounding us, Sierra and I decided that I had gotten enough from up here, and it was time to seek shelter in the trees below.  Oddly enough, on our way off of the summit, we passed by a group that was going out where we had just been.  One of the girls was wearing HEELS!!  Wow, I would have never considered wearing heels to hike in.  That just seemed dangerous.  I asked them later on why she was in heels.  Turns out one of the guys and her had just gotten engaged and they were doing their engagement photos on the summit.  That was just too cool.  I just hope that they had a little better luck with the wind than I had.

Sierra and I worked our way back to the parking lot where she grabbed a quick snack.  It was raining, and the clouds were very blah at this point.  It was still early though, and we decided that we would head over to my alternate location...the Lower Cascades.  With all the rain that had been falling recently, I was expecting it to be alive with water, and I was excited about the possibilities since for the most part I've been less than happy with my attempts at this waterfall in the past.

Death Grip

When we arrived, I immediately saw a fallen tree in the pool below the waterfall. My instincts told me to react by saying "well crap, I don't think I can move that."  However, as quickly as I though that, I saw possibilities.  This was one of those moments where I could shoot this waterfall different than so many before me.  I'm not sure how long this tree had been there, but I knew that things like this don't stay for a long time, and that meant that I had the opportunity to make some real one of a kind art from this waterfall today.  My excitement level went through the roof...until I realized just how hard it was to incorporate into a composition in the position it was in.  Sure enough, I was unable to move it at all, so I had to work with what was there.

My favorite composition using the tree was to get right up on it, using my 16-35mm lens, and get in down low.  I found that getting low did two things for this composition.  First, it got a lot of the overhanging branches out of the way, and second, it allowed two of the branches to actually frame the waterfall.  Yeah, this was going to be pretty cool!  I was seeing all sorts of textures in this frame, and there was essentially a frame within a frame which make for very strong visual directing.

A Golden Invitation

Ironically, that was not my first attempt at incorporating the tree.  I started originally by going to this location where there was a slight bit of white water as it passed by the rocks.  I used that bit of visual interest, the tree, and the waterfall to bring in the powerful grouping of three into the frame.  I also used the rocks as a leading line to get to the waterfall itself.  The composition was just as I had envisioned it, but the tree wasn't as powerful as I had wanted due to the angle it was at.  Still, this is a very strong image, and it turned out just as I had previsualized it.

Yellow Brick Road

Looking at the previous composition, I decided that I might not need the tree in it after all. I flipped the camera over on its side, and recomposed without the tree.  This was a much more direct composition that relied on the rocks purely as a leading line with the bit of white water as the visual foreground.  Again, this was an effective composition and one that I was quite happy with.  It was seeming that I was having a stroke of luck that I have rarely gotten with this waterfall before.  I was loving it!

I decided that I wanted to move in closer to make the waterfall a bit more predominant in the frame.  I also saw a tree with a root system that I'm sure Toni would have pointed out to me had she been with us today.  I kept the superwide angle lens attached since I knew I wanted to exaggerate the roots as the foreground.  To do this, I actually set up directly in the tangle of roots at the base of the tree you can see in the upper right of the previous image.

Subtle Textures

What I love about this picture, besides the intricate root system is that there are three distinct layers of textures.  In the foreground, we see the rocks and roots which are presented in such a way that you could reach out and touch them.  In the midground, we see the silky waterfall which looks soft as cotton.  The background is made up of the very hard edges of the rocky wall, which almost seems to encase the waterfall.  There is a lot to look at in this picture, and those are the types that I really enjoy looking at, especially when they are printed out large.  Only then can all the details be fully appreciated.

When I had gotten all the goody out of the scene with my wide angle lens, I decided to swap in my 70-200mm for some intimate isolations.  The only problem...the waterflow was too strong for me to get any really good isolations.  The answer came from the secondary drops downstream.  There was some really good waterflow there, and some visual interest that I could get up close and personal with.

The Lone Leaf

With the battery indicator flashing red, I was able to set this shot up and make the necessary long exposure to capture it.  The composition was pretty strong to begin with, but the addition of the leaf at the bottom of the image actually makes it all work together.  The embarrassing fact of this picture was, it was set up so quickly because the battery was about dead that I totally missed the leaf.  It wasn't until I got home and looked at the digital negative that I actually saw the splash of color that the entire picture needed.  It was a happy accident for sure, and partly pays me back for those times I missed elements in the frame that actually ruined the picture!

With my battery dead, and it getting late, I decided to swap in a new battery, and put the camera away.  I had nearly 80 frames to go through when I got home, and that was plenty for a couple hours work.  Sierra and I were tired, and needed to get home for dinner, and to see Toni who had been working hard at home.

2016, It's been an interesting year

Holding Back the Day

This year started out rather confused when it came to my hobbies and things that I was wanting to do.  On one hand, I was coming off of one of the most successful cycling years I had ever experienced, but was tired of the training that I had put myself through.  On the other, I was changing my job function at work which meant that I was trading in my patrol car office for an actual office inside of a building.  Yep, I was going to be driving a desk after 16 years with the department.  This was a very good thing for both me and my family.  It also came with some bare walls that needed to be decorated.

With the cold weather of winter, I had reduced my cycling to shorter rides, and only on days that I could manage the cold.  On other days, I was starting to get back into my photography again with the hopes of getting some new pictures that I wanted on the walls of my office.  Funny how things go full circle, since I originally got into photography to dress up the walls at home.  Well, I was getting out occasionally, but found myself going to the same old places over and over that I have for years.  I was actually taking many of the same pictures as I had done over and over.  There was not much excitement for me, until I made a trip to Hanging Rock and shot something completely different.

Braided Knot

This simple old, fallen tree on the way to the Upper Cascades caught my eye.  When I printed out the proof and showed Toni, she immediately fell in love with it.  I liked it, but it wasn't all that great in my mind.  She told me to get that printed out as a 13x19" and get it framed for the house.  OK, why not.  It wasn't what I would really want, but what the heck.  When I printed it out, I was amazed at the detail and textures.  I fell in love with it, and that love was even stronger once it got framed.  I could then see what she saw in the picture, and I was impressed.  It was this printing, and framing that really motivated me to do a bit more with my photography, and I had hopes of finding some really good pictures to put up in the office.

Fast forward to January 1st, when I was out riding my bike once again, putting photography on hold.  I didn't mind, the plan was to be a photographer when cycling wasn't possible (cold, wet, nasty days).  I got my 62 miles in on New Year's Day like every cyclist was supposed to do.  I felt great for having done the ride, but somehow I felt like I had pedaled the day away.

When Toni and I went on our anniversary trip to West Jefferson, I took my camera as I usually do with the intention of getting out for some pictures in the mountains.  We made several long trips around the area and I had fun with my camera, but I still didn't have that excitement that I was wanting to feel.  My photographs felt forced for lack of a better word.  My goal was still to find pictures for my walls in my office though.  I didn't find that picture...Toni did.

Rust and Splinters

There I was driving around, minding my own business when Toni yells out something to the effect of "How about that barn?"  It was too late, I had gone past it and missed it entirely.  I asked if it was worth turning around for, and she said that she thought so.  When I saw it, I was so happy that I had turned around.  It was perfect!  Set underneath an evergreen backdrop with a little bit of a snow flurry falling.  There was a fence keeping me off of the actual property, and the road was under construction, so there were orange barrels all around, but that didn't keep me from grabbing several different views of this old barn.  When I got home and processed the picture, I knew right then and there, I had one for the office.  Now, I was experiencing the excitement that I love so much with photography.

Unfortunately, the rest of January kind of piddled out photographically.  I was getting out, but I wasn't seeing near the success I was wanting to see, and the excitement was dwindling once again.  I was still doing a good deal of bike riding, but it was mainly on the trainer inside, since it was getting much too cold for me to ride outside.  At this point though, I was more going through the motions on the bike, and my heart really wasn't in it any more.

In an odd twist, Toni and I decided to go out to the Outer Banks in late February since we both like the beach in small doses, and without much in the way of crowds.  As you would expect, I took my camera with me, but found myself jealous of Toni who went out running in the mornings.  I kept thinking that I should have just brought my bike with me since early on in the trip I was not really liking the pictures I was getting.  Then the last morning happened...

Outer Banks Reflections

The sunrise wasn't all that great, but knowing what I could do with a camera made up for the shortfalls.  I pulled out the long lens to compress the sky and take advantage of all the color that I could, and slowed the shutter down to smooth the ocean.  This was more what I was looking for.  I was still wishing I had brought my bike, but I was now happy I had brought the camera.  Once I got home and started going through the pictures, I found a number of them that I really liked.  I was happy now that I had brought the camera and not the bike.  Yeah, I know, I'm not good at committing am I?

It was nearly another month before I got out with the camera again.  If memory serves, I was suffering some artist block, and was just unable to think of what I wanted to photograph.  Of course, that pushed me back to the bike again, and with the temperatures getting warmer, I wasn't really complaining.  On the last weekend in March, it was raining and cold, and I was tired of being on the trainer, so I decided that I would take off and head to South Mountains to photograph the white water.  It was largely a bust, and I didn't really get excited about the outcome.  There were some decent pictures, but something just wasn't clicking between me and the camera.

I found myself thinking less and less about photography, but I wasn't wanting to give it up.  I just ended up spending more and more time on my bike.  I traveled some 5,000 miles over the course of 2016, stopping occasionally to go out with the camera every other month or so.  I just wasn't really happy with what I was bringing back from these trips.  To make matters worse, I was having a very hard time with my prints having some very strange color casts on a good many of my proof prints.  It was less of a problem when I printed through Photoshop, but it was still discouraging to have a nicely balanced image on the screen which printed through rose tinted glasses.

Several things happened toward the end of summer which greatly changed my direction as a photographer.  The first thing that happened was I decided that I would enter the Dixie Classic Fair as I had done in years past.  I had no idea what I would enter, but for some reason, I really wanted to participate again.  The second thing that happened was my computer crashed.  Yeah, that sucked!

Since the computer was nearly 10 years old, I really didn't want to upgrade the hard drive.  My only option was to buy a new one.  Since I was still dabbling with photography, I decided to find a computer that would be able to handle photo editing a little easier than my previous one.  With Toni's blessing, I shelled out a nice chunk of change to get a new computer with all new software since all of mine was designed to run on Vista.  My biggest challenge was whether or not to upgrade my Photoshop to the Creative Cloud.  Ultimately, I did.  I also got Lightroom which I had heard about but never used.

I'll be honest, the Creative Cloud programs sat idle on the computer for a while before I went out and got some new pictures.  Wanting to get familiar with Lightroom, I set out one afternoon to shoot a barn which I had done several times before.  This was not so much about getting a great picture as it was about really trying out the new software from a capture to print workflow.

Dairy Barn in the Summer in B&W

What I found while I was at the barn was, I just didn't want to shoot the same old compositions here.  I was used to going with a wide angle lens and shooting it up close and personal.  This time, I refused to do it, and I really don't know why.  I fitted my long 70-200mm lens and stepped back.  I had tried many times to include the white fence in this picture, but never really liked the outcome.  The scale was always off.  With the long lens, however, things came together perfectly.  I had the picture I had always wanted.

I was excited about it when I got home and tried to edit it in Lightroom.  That was a mess!  I had no real idea how the different sliders worked, but I fiddled with it for a while and then gave up.  I brought the picture into Photoshop and started to work it there, but found that I was liking what I had in Lightroom better...so, I went back and started over in Lightroom.  I ended up with a photograph that I really liked in color, until I printed it.  Again with the odd color casts.  I removed those, and printed it again, and it was tolerable, but not quite what I was looking at on the screen.  To get around this, I did a B&W conversion which looked great and it printed out decent too.

Overall, I was happy with the day, and had a couple of really good pictures which printed out marginally well.  In fact, I was considering outsourcing the printing to see if maybe my color profiles were just jacked up.  I wanted to see this print done as a large print, but wasn't really wanting to see it from my printer, LOL!  I was feeling defeated in the middle of feeling happy.

I spent the next few days looking at different YouTube tutorials on Lightroom, and reading all I could about it.  I was finally able to make sense out of most of the controls in Lightroom, and knew what they could do, and the limits that they could be pushed.  As a slight bonus, I was also searching out the issues that I was having with the printer.  I found my answer, and it was one that I had known all along, but had thought I had already addressed it...disabling the automatic color management.  Well, I now knew how to properly do it, and I was looking for a test subject.

Since, I was mostly displeased with the print of the barn in color, I tried that with the new color management and found that it was spot on accurate with what I was seeing on the monitor.  This was amazing...I had finally fixed a problem which had vexed me since getting into print making at home in 2008!!!  I was on a roll, and now armed with a much higher quality of print.  It was time to start deciding on what to enter for the Dixie Classic!

Well, I had my B&W entry already set with the picture of the barn.  I just needed to find a color picture that I could enter.  I was going through my recent catalog, but just couldn't find the right one I wanted to put in for a competition.  I needed one that would appeal to a majority of viewers since I didn't really know who was going to be judging.  I decided to try putting my new found understanding of Lightroom to the test and and go back for a rework of a previous image.  I went through my old RAW negatives and found one that I really liked from a compositional standpoint, but had given me a terrible time with exposure latitude.  I imported it, and started to do the edit.  It looked awkward at first, but as I started to fine tune things, it all started to come together.

Down to Earth

I don't think that I have ever posted a RAW image before, but here is the original image shot in 2014.  When I saw the difference that Lightroom had allowed to the details, my heart rate soared.  This was going to be my entry for the Dixie Classic Fair.  Knowing that my printer issues were more than likely fixed, I went ahead and threw caution to the wind and set it to print for the first time as a 13x19" print.  This was a bold move since it costs a fair amount to print at this size, but I was feeling bold that night.  When it rolled out of the printer, I was absolutely amazed at what I saw.  It was excellent in every capacity, and I was beyond excited to get it framed.

It was this photograph that really changed me as a photographer.  While I still don't care for massive post processing, I have learned to embrace what the camera is actually capable of doing.  The exposure latitude of my 5D Mk3 is much more than I had given it credit for in the past.  I was now able to look at scenes differently, and had a much better chance of presenting what I had seen.  Between the post processing abilities and the print making, I was now fully realizing the process that I had been striving for.  I felt like a photographer!

In October two things happened which went a long way in supporting my evolution as an artists.  First off, my two entries in the Dixie Classic both won first place awards in their class.  The second was after a trip to Virginia, I posted the new pictures online, and the very next day I went to work a dear friend of mine dropped by my office and made a surprising request that I wasn't expecting at all.

Blue Ridge Autos

After talking about some of my photographs, and discussing the handful that I had on my wall, she said that she wanted a print of the old cars lined up under the tree that I had just done.  Wait...was she...did she just...YES, she was wanting to buy one of my pictures, and not a small one either.  She was wanting a 13x19" print.  Holy cow, things were starting to really come at me fast.  I got it printed out, and delivered in about a week.  I was so excited to see this one printed out big.  Since it costs me to print like this, I don't do it often, so I love having the opportunity to see them, even if I don't get to keep them.

While I hadn't been in the business of selling prints for several years now, this was a mixed blessing for me.  On the one hand, it meant that my art was speaking to others once again, and that was great.  On the other hand, it meant that people would be wanting my art to hang on their own walls.  For an artist that is a scary proposition on many levels.  I started to wrap my mind around that, and slowly started to gear photography back in the direction of sales without trying to be a salesman.

Racing Towards the Sunrise

With Fall upon us, I had to make a choice.  I was either going to continue riding my bike and keeping up with my training, or I was going to focus on my photography.  I was seeing that when I tried to do both, I ended up finding all the excuses in the world not to do either, or to only do one.  It had been quite some time since I really hunted down Fall colors, so I decided that this year was going to be different.  It started in late September when Toni and I went to Brevard in hopes of finding the early color at the higher elevations.  That didn't really work out all that well, but I did manage to get out for a few sunrises that weekend which again showed me the power of Lightroom.  I was all set for the month of October and had my plan on where to be and at what times with the hopes of finding the color as it peaked.  The problem was, the drought that happened seemed to really mess up the timing of the season, and the colors didn't do quite what they were supposed to do...but that's nature for you.

Mountain Red Head

I went out every weekend in October regardless of weather.  The most memorable trip happened on the weekend that Hurricane Matthew hit.  It was windy as could be, but the sky was so full of awesomeness.  I spent the better part of the day on the Blue Ridge Parkway, but found very little in the way of Autumn color.  The skies more than made up for it though.  One of the hardest pictures to create came from Laurel Knob, and it was one that I really pushed the limits of the camera on, but found that the finished product looked very interesting, but I wasn't sure if I liked it or not.  In a way, it was kind of like Braided Knot, pictured earlier in this article.  I'll get into that a little more later on.

Things were going so well, and I was really coming into my own as a nature photographer once again.  I decided that I was going to need to learn as much as I could, and find new locations to shoot at if I was going to be successful as a photographer.  After some searching, I found one of the largest regional photographer's clubs, the Carolinas' Nature Photographers Association.  I went ahead and joined and started going to the meetings to learn as much as I could about photography in this area.  One of the first things I learned was photographers in this area go far away to get their favorite images.  Well dang, I can't afford to do that, so I tried to pay the most attention to things that were much closer to home.

Dream Catcher

Still trying to chase the Fall color, I decided to stick close to home at the end of October and try Old Salem.  I've been here many times in the past, and typically shoot the historic buildings, which are usually surrounded by modern cars, and signs that tell about the history.  On this particular trip, I was more interested in shooting the leaves where I could find them.  It was also one of those trips where I decided to break my normal patters by ditching the "normal" lens and using my 70-200mm primarily.  This forced me to consider the compositions differently than before, and ultimately forced the creative process to step in.  One of the resulting images from Old Salem was this one here which was another one of those that I just knew Toni would love.  She enjoys pictures of trees that show their character, and this one did that with a blast of color from the setting sun behind.  I was pretty sure that she would love this picture, and she did...but she surprised me with her request.

Sitting in the living room, she told me that she wanted to change the pictures up and bring some new color into the living room.  She detailed what she wanted to do, and told me that to balance out her beloved Braided Knot, she wanted a new tree picture.  I was thinking that she was going to go for this one, since they were both shot in portrait orientation, but I was wrong.  She wanted the creepy tree I had shot on the Parkway from Laurel Knob.  Well, like I said, I liked it, but wasn't so sure I liked it like that.  But what Toni wants, Toni gets.

Gnarled Centurion

I have to be honest here.  When I printed it out, I saw a lot to like about the picture, but I saw a bunch that I wished had been different.  I was on the fence about it, and it took until the next morning for the inks to settle before I could really look at it.  It was OK in my opinion, but Toni really loved it.  I know that I am always harder on myself than I need to be, so I went with the flow and took it to the framer.

David Card who has been doing my framing for the past couple of years at After 5 Framing was impressed with the picture and worked with me in selecting the right combination of mats and frame to really make it pop.  Since this was for Toni, I went wild with the options and tried not to cut any corners.  I was feeling a bit of buyer's remorse after getting the bill, but I liked what was planned for it.  After a couple of weeks it was ready and David called me and in a very creative way told me to prepare myself for the finished product.  He said this was the best one to date.  And, when I picked it up later that day, I have to say, I agreed with him.  It finally made sense in the frame, and it all came together.  Of course, Toni loved it and was happy to have it on the main wall in the living room.

The story wasn't over with that though.  David asked me if I would consider selling him a print of this old tree.  Heck Yeah I would!!!  He said that this was only the second time that he had wanted to buy a piece of art from one of his customers in all the years that he has been in business.  Talk about humbling!  Well, I went home and printed it out once again as a 13x19", which was signed on the front by request (little trivia for the collectors out there).  I again had that mixed emotion on seeing the print.  I kept picking out the things that I saw wrong with the picture, and that brought me down from the high that I should have been feeling, but David liked it, Toni liked it, and I was doing these prints for them.

Well, I took it to work, and had it laying out getting ready to take to David, and I had several folks drop by and talk to me about it.  One of which told me that he was planning on getting several of my prints for his home and office.  While all of this was going on, I got an email for a print request from my favorite barn shot in Jefferson, Rust and Splinters.  OK, this was starting to get real.  I was actually having to juggle orders in my head. I had one about to be delivered, one being ordered, and several others being spoken for.  It was a stress I was happy for, but again, it was rather scary.

In just a couple of days, I had a formal order for another Gnarled Centurion print from my coworker.  This was now the third time I had printed this particular picture in 13x19"!!  I still wasn't sure I liked it that much, but I was happy to be wrong on this one.  I started to feel like the singer that has that one song that everyone wants to hear at the concerts year after year.  I've got to admit, that isn't a bad problem to have

Well, I had kind of floated around with my photography at the beginning of the year with no intention of making it a serious venture.  There were a series of mundane trips through the year, and then, the computer crashed.  Once I got things up and running once again, I found new inspiration in my craft.  I have not seen the saddle of my bike in months now, and I have been fully involved with my photography.  Not only am I out trying new things with old locations, I am learning all that I can about the art of photography, along with post production.  There are still things that I have no interest in doing in Photoshop because it damages the integrity of the image, but I'm really liking the photo specific nature of Lightroom, and the opportunities that it is opening up for me.

A Bit of Drama

Guarded and Weathered

A Close Race

The Wolf's Cry

In each of the images here, I have stretched what I thought I was capable of as a photographer.  The techniques I have used here have focused on exposure latitude, and really trying to pull the details that were captured by the camera.  I'm by no means  fully proficient, but I have to say that the work that I am producing here in the closing months of 2016 is by far the best that I've done since starting back in 2005.  I have much to learn still, but I'm breaking out of my restrictive molds which have kept me prisoner for so long.

In many ways, I have Toni to thank for much of my success this year.  Whether it is her voice telling me to photograph a certain tree, or her constant support of my long days along the Blue Ridge Parkway, she is always behind me.  I am very fortunate to have her by my side, and am very fortunate that she has an artist's eye as well.  I love you, my Photo Wench!

Light Chasing at Stone Mountain

Saturday, December 17, 2016

The Widow's Pool

Last weekend, Toni and I headed out to Stone Mountain to make use of the forecasted, cloudy sky.  Well, all the way there, we watched the clear blue sky that never materialized more than a thin cloud here and there.  We made it to our destination of Widow's Creek Falls, but the light was just too harsh to really even try anything.  We enjoyed the trip and I did some scouting on the way back, but the camera never left the bag.

Today was another chance to try and work that waterfall again.  The forecast was for Cloudy and spotty rain for most of the day.  There was even a little ice forecasted for the morning.  Because of that, I held off going until I was relatively sure that the roads would be fine...not to mention that I don't like slipping on the ice when I have my camera in tow.  I did that several years ago, and it cost me a lens and a camera body...but I digress.  Anyway, I checked the weather one last time around 10am, and found that it was satisfactory for waterfall photography.  It was a bonus to look outside and see the same clouds that were in the hourly forecast, unlike last week.

The trip was quick, and the clouds maintained a perfect look for my needs.  When I got to the falls, I grabbed my gear and made the excruciatingly long hike to the falls.  It might have been a full tenth of a mile!!  I knew that the water level was low from my visit last week, but that wasn't going to bother me.  I have spent the last week thinking about how I could do different isolations on this waterfall.  My plan was to use a different lens entirely from what I was used to using here.  Normally, I stay on the wide side of my focal range, and use either the 16-35mm or 24-70mm.  My plan was to fit the 70-200mm lens and not to look back.

At first it was strange to be photographing here with a long lens.  I just have never done that before.  However, much of the end of 2016 has been about pushing my limits and trying new things with the camera, so I worked the scene as best I could with the lens.  What I found out (and part of why I chose this approach) was that I could actually get a nice full view of the waterfall from further away, which changed the relationship of the foreground and the background.  Since the water flow was lower than normal, I needed to increase the relative size of the waterfall to the other elements.  Shooting at the long end of my lens was making that possible, with an added benefit of staying out of the water.

Keyhole

The other nice thing about shooting with the long lens was the ability to create isolations of the waterfall.  You see, I've always really loved this waterfall because of the character it has.  Right between the two primary water slides, there are a series of holes which at times look like a face.  It has always been these holes in the rock that have caught my attention over the years.  With a minor flow of water, now was the best time to get up close and highlight these features.  Today, I even found another element that I really liked that I don't think I had ever paid attention to before.  There is a slightly gold colored rock at the base between the two slides.  It just really stuck out to me today, and it begged to get a little attention.  I framed several of my shots so that this single rock would grab the eyes, and the water would then pull them through the scene.  It worked every time, in my opinion.

The Pondering Spot

In addition to the golden rock, there was also some very vibrant moss on the wall.  This gave me that splash of color that I needed in the landscape oriented frame.  There was a nearly perfect visual balance with the mossy patches at the upper left, which posed a photographic dichotomy with the bare rock to the bottom right.  Of course, the golden rock was still doing its job grabbing the visual attention to the cutouts in the rock face.  While I do prefer this waterfall with more flow, I have to say that even with a limited flow, there are lots of great opportunities with this particular waterfall.

By this point, I had spent about 45 minutes or so photographing this waterfall from various different points along the side of the creek.  I was getting rather excited to see what I had captured, but knew I would have to wait until I got home to really see since the LCD review of my RAW images is so flat and bland.  All I could really tell was that I got well exposed images with no clipping on the extremes of the histogram and that the compositions were as I had intended.  Other than that, I was going to have to wait for the digital negatives to be processed.

Mossy Shiver

Before deciding that I was done, I wanted to try one more thing.  For those of you who know this particular waterfall, you will recognize the last image here.  Down stream from the waterfall, there are a couple of places where the water slide develops some small cascades.  I have tried to photograph these before, but never satisfactorily.  Today, I happened to notice that the spray from the miniature cascade had caused a sheet of ice to form on the neighboring rock.  Under that ice was some moss which kind of bled through in green.  Since I had my long lens on, I decided to use that, but step back away from the scene I was wanting.  Normally, I would get up close to it, and shoot a little wider.  I see now, that was my problem all along.  I had the perfect composition with the long lens, and even better was the fact that I had the ice to balance the shot.

I had shot about 40 or so pictures from this waterfall in about an hour's time.  As I had intended, I kept resisting the urge to swap out my long lens, so every one of the pictures that I made here were done between 70-200mm which was a first for me.  I was very excited about them all, and couldn't wait to get home to see what I had captured.  It was a good thing I was done because I could see that the sky was starting to clear up.  Well, the weather had forecasted partial clearing between 1 and 3 before the clouds returned.  Things were going right as planned...

But I didn't really plan for what was next.  Looking at the sky, I could see that the clouds were moving at a nice pace across the sky, and the blue was that perfect Carolina Blue that I love seeing in pictures.  Hmmm, I was wanting to go home, but I was seeing the chance to really try out some long exposure shots using my 10-Stop ND filter.  In order to do that, I was going to have to get some elevation, and get out of the trees.  Fortunately, I was at Stone Mountain, and there are some great vistas along the various trails.  I knew that I needed to work fast, and looking at where the sky had interest, I knew that I was going to need to shoot toward the North.  That meant I was going to need to get to Wolf Rock.

The Wolf's Cry

The hike to Wolf Rock isn't all that long, at just over a mile I think.  That mile is a constant climb though which makes it a little strenuous compared to many of the hikes I do.  It was what I was going to have to do in order to get the elevation I needed to shoot the clouds.  Of course, as I was hiking up the trail, it appeared as though the clouds were coming back into the picture.  Since I had committed to the climb, I decided to continue on to see what I could do once I got to the overlook.  I was losing hope though, as it was getting darker and darker once again.

When I arrived at Wolf Rock, there was a small bit of blue sky right where I expected the break in the clouds to be.  It wasn't much, but enough to where I started to work on some different compositions.  For this, I decided that my 24-70mm lens would be most appropriate for incorporating foreground interest and keeping the mountains from shrinking into rolling hills in the distance.  The trick was keeping the horizon high enough to just include the small bit of interest in the sky right at the horizon.  I wasn't really happy with what I was photographing, but I kept working the scene.

Then it happened....

The sky broke open, and there was a lot of blue, and the white clouds were moving at a pretty nice clip.  This was what I was waiting for.  I found a composition that I liked, using a section of trees growing out of the rock.  I set the valley in the distance to the left as a background, and grabbed as much of the sky as I could.  Once I got the proper exposure set, 1/13 of a second with a polarizer, I fitted the Lee filter holder and added my 10-Stop filter.  I started to do some test shots and found that a minute was pretty close to what I needed for the right exposure.  However, I wanted more to show more movement in the clouds.  I stopped down to f/16 and went with a 1:30 second exposure...viola!!

I hadn't been completely sure how the clouds would display with this long exposure since I had not really used my 10-Stop seriously in the past.  What I saw was exactly what I was going for, and I almost started to jump up and down in celebration.  I didn't though, as I wanted to move to the other side of the trees and fire off another shot for a slightly different feel.

Together in Time

Well, I found the composition that I wanted, and thanks to being able to look through live view with the filter still on, it went pretty quick.  However, not quite quick enough.  By the time I had set the shot up, and dialed in the focus, the clouds were starting to clear.  There were still a few, and I had to get down very low to the ground in order to catch those.  I fired off a Hail Marry shot using the same 1:30 exposure at f/16.  It wasn't quite what I was after, but I did get the remaining clouds in the frame and they started right above the tree as if to highlight it.  It was going to have to do, because the clouds were just about gone at this point.  The sun was now out of the clouds, and was making the lighting very harsh.  It was time to pack up and head back to the car.

Going downhill is so much faster than going uphill!!!

When I got back to the car, I decided that I would head out to Pilot Mountain hoping that when the clouds came back in, I could duplicate my long exposure with the Knob as the visual anchor.  The plan was great, but the clouds came in too quick for me to have a chance to get there in time.  I diverted about halfway there to head back home.  I wanted to see what I had captured anyway.

I had a total of 69 frames which I had exposed in my few hours at Stone Mountain.  Most of the second half were tossed due to less than pretty skies in comparison to the long exposure images.  I ended up with these six images which considering the amount that I trashed from the second half was actually very good for the day.  I always have so much fun at Stone Mountain since there is something for just about every lighting possibility I could run into.  I went from total overcast, to dramatic clouds against a blue background.  It just doesn't get much better than this.

Ahhh, The Welcomed Rains

Sunday, December 4, 2016

The Softer Side

If you have been following my blog, you will know that here in NC, we have been in one of the worst droughts I can remember since October.  We have finally started to get some rain here recently, and while it is not enough to make up for the weeks without, it is a start.  Looking at the weekend forecast, it appeared that today was going to be cloudy pretty much all day, with passing rain showers in the morning and afternoon.  That pretty much makes for perfect waterfall photography in my books.  Having had some recent rains, I figured that there might actually be some water in the falls for a change.

When the morning arrived, the forecast had even more rain (and actually some snow) in the morning.  It was enough to keep me at home for a few extra hours until it slacked off.  I didn't mind because all the rain that was falling was going to be flowing over the rocks when I needed it to.  At about 10 o'clock or so, I loaded the truck up and headed out to Hanging Rock State Park which is fairly close, and when it comes to waterfall photography, it has the most bang for the buck.

All the way out there, I was getting rained on pretty steady, but it was not enough to keep me from going on with my plans.  I've done a lot of photography in light rain, and that really doesn't scare me at all.  In fact, it is better to have rain with waterfalls because it helps to keep the ground wet to help balance exposure.  The only time it really gets to be a problem is when I am miles away from the truck and a downpour catches me.  I've been through several of those as well.  Toni even got caught in one when we were photographing Roaring Fork Falls about a year ago.

By the time I arrived, the rain had pretty much stopped, so I was able to get working immediately.  I headed out to the Upper Cascades first since that is probably my favorite spot in the park these days.  I wanted to make sure I had time to work that waterfall just in case the rain returned.

Dream Weaver

The hike was simple until I got to the bottom of the stairs to get down to ground level.  Remember when I said that rain was good for waterfall photography?  Well, there are always trade-offs.  In this case the rocks were nice and wet which made for slippery footing.  It took a little doing to get into position without falling.  Fortunately, I was all alone so nobody laughed at me being overly careful with a heavy backpack on my back.  It wasn't long before I had the camera built up, and fitted with my 16-35mm lens for an overall shot of the falls.  I've photographed this waterfall on so many occasions I pretty much know where to put the tripod.  I followed tradition for the first little bit and found my "standard" compositions.  I shot them because I wanted to try some different post processing with them, so I wanted a bit of a different rendition of my favorite shots.  I was really happy with what I was seeing thanks to a polarizer and my ND filter which gave me about 13 seconds of exposure.  

Nature's Movements

While the water was much fuller than I was expecting, there was still ample detail in the flow which caught my attention more than once while I was photographing the "postcard" shot.  Once I was finished working the broad scene, I swapped lenses to be able to use my 70-200mm which is great at pulling out the details of waterfalls.  Since I was wanting as much detail as possible, I ditched the ND filter so that my shutter speed would stay around three to four seconds for the close up shots.  I also shot with B&W in mind since there wasn't really any color present in these isolations.  There were a few different areas that really caught my eye and provided me with some compositions within compositions.

Dream Channel

By this point, the rain was coming back and I found that I was having to wipe down the polarizer after every few shots.  This was one of those times I wished that I didn't have to use a slightly oversized filter preventing me from using a lens hood.  Well, to keep money and weight down, I use a set of 82mm filters which fit my largest lenses, while I use an adapter ring on my long lens which is 77mm in diameter.  Not much difference, but enough that my hood won't work.  Oh well, it wasn't a big problem to dry the filter off occasionally, and I was getting some really good shots at this point.

Simply Complex

Intimate Cascade

Not all of my isolations called for monochrome treatment, however.  When there was color in the frame from the vegetation, I shot it with color in mind.  It is not that I prefer one over the other, but for this particular waterfall, each composition called for something specific which is why you are not seeing a color version as well as a black and white version.  Each is represented the way the scene dictates, and I felt that was enough.

In the hour that I was at the Upper Cascades, I shot some 35 images.  For the most part, each one of them was a specific composition as the lighting was so uniform, I didn't have to change the exposure except for creative reasons.  It is a lot of fun to work in this kind of light because it is a set it and forget it affair.  I get to spend all my energy finding the compositions which really increases my hit rate.

When that hour was up, I had photographed pretty much everything that I wanted to with the Upper Cascades and still had plenty of time to hit the other falls in the park.  The rain wasn't too terrible either.  I made the quick hike back to the parking lot and went to the other side with thoughts of Hidden Falls and Window Falls going through my head.

The next stop on my journey was Hidden Falls, which is...well....hidden on the trail to Window Falls.  I wasn't sure how much water flow this one was going to have since it is a small little cascade under the best conditions.  Well, when I got there, there wasn't really much to the overall waterfall.  In fact, since I have photographed it many times, I didn't even bother with an overall photograph.  What I have is already much better than what I was seeing in front of me.  However, I haven't done much with my 70-200mm lens with this particular waterfall.  Since I was already in the mindset to grab intimate shots of the waterfalls, that was just what I set out to do.

Down the Mossy Steps

There were really only two sections of this waterfall that I found particularly interesting.  There was a segment at the bottom which was visually active, but had too many distractions around the action which detracted from the image, as well as providing too many scale cues.  The section that I found most interesting was part of the primary drop.  The textures of the moss contrasted perfectly with the flow of the water.  The evenly spaced rocky steps gave me that perfect rhythm to the image, and the brown of the rock below balanced the greens along the sides.  This was the story that Hidden Falls was trying to tell today.

Having told the story of Hidden Falls the best that I could, I packed the camera up and made the rest of the hike to the Window Falls.  The hardest part of this hike was the steps that I had to go down...and back up which were wet and slippery.  I was hearing some water, but really wasn't sure the magnitude of what I was hearing.  This one is a real gamble since I've seen it all dried up, and overflowing at completely random times.  There is not usually a middle ground for this one, but I was hearing water at least. 

When I arrived, I saw that there was a slight trickle at least.  It wasn't impressive, but there was water dropping from the ledge.  Typically, I would set up the wide angle and shoot it from either the left or the right.  Not only was the water flow terrible for that, there was so much debris along the base of the falls now.  I wasn't sure I could get a pleasing composition that incorporated the actual waterfall.  I wasn't really all that heartbroken because with the slight trickle of water, the story was not in the waterfall itself...the story was in the details once again.

A Tender Moment

What my eyes were seeing was the faint spray hitting the mossy rocks below.  This was where the action was, and this was my story.  I moved into a position where I could also include the large rock in the background, keeping it positioned above the frothy water.  My 70-200mm lens was the perfect choice for the composition.  The exposure was pretty simple here since the top of the frame was in the shadows, and the light was hitting the water as it dropped.  I just had to be careful with the shutter speed which was kept at 3.2 seconds to keep from losing the detail in the water.

I tried some other compositions as well, but none had quite the visual balance of this one.  Once again, the photograph was actually deep inside of the subject.  That is one of the things that I am enjoying in my current interpretation of photography.  I am trying to go for the different pictures, especially since so many of the subjects I'm shooting have been shot so many times in the past.  My workhorse lens is quickly becoming the 70-200mm which is one that I would rarely use years ago.  I'm finding that narrowing the view is the best way to unlock so many creative doors.

I had wanted to check out the Lower Cascades, but decided against it.  I wanted to get home and start processing the 63 images I shot so that I would be able to have a relaxing evening before going to work tomorrow.  I was very excited to find that I had eight keepers from that batch which is well above my average.  Now I have to figure out which ones will be a part of the gallery which is always a fun task.

Well, I got lost again

Saturday, December 3, 2016

This is an odd time of year for a landscape photographer, and I'm no different in that respect.  The bright colors of Autumn are gone, the lush green of Summer has long since expired, and we are waiting on Spring to come.  Many landscape photographers will shelve their cameras until the new growth starts, but that is where I differ.  Winter is an interesting time for me photographically speaking.  I tend to stick close to home and work on my barns and old cars, and will occasionally venture out for waterfalls when the weather is right.  Well, I'm really wanting to do some waterfall photography right now, but the water tables are still too low for what I am really after.  That leaves driving around and trying to locate some interesting old cars, or barns.  This is hardly an efficient use of time as a photographer since only a small fraction of the time spent is actually making pictures.  But in lieu of having a subject in mind, scouting is the only viable option.

Today, I was looking at the weather, which was forecasting mostly sunny skies all day.  This was not ideal, and the threat of rain and clouds tomorrow sounded much better.  However, when I woke up, I saw an amazing sunrise which wasn't what I was expecting based on the weather report.  Well, I didn't get a chance to photograph the sunrise, but I did start looking at the sky which was pretty much consistently more cloudy than I had been lead to believe.  The clouds never really cleared, but there was still some very good light to work with.  It was too much light for intimate landscape work, but was pretty good for doing the rustic scenes...so that was what I set out to do.

My plan was to putter around in Davidson County for a bit and then ultimately head out to Pilot Mountain to catch a sunset.  I went by a barn in Forsyth County that I had photographed before, but it showed no character today.  I went down into Davidson County to check out an old Apache truck I had photographed before, but it was gone.  Hmmm, I wasn't really doing all that well so far.

I kept on driving, and ended up in Randolph County near Uwharrie which I had never been before.  i have to say, there is a lot of great stuff out there to photograph, but none of it was jumping out at me today.  It was all just so blah in the current conditions.  I got out on a few old buildings, and for one reason or another decided against setting the camera up.  I got so lost since I was proceeding without GPS going, and was just turning randomly at intersections.  All I knew was I was South and East away from home, beyond that I had no idea where I was.  I even found a few unpaved roads which were kind of fun to explore in their own right.  I just wished I was able to find that right scene that spoke to me.

One of the intersections that I came to held a little surprise for me.  After going miles without seeing much at all, I looked to the right (actually planning on turning left), and saw a tin roof and a silo.  It also appeared to be set off away from surrounding clutter.  This could be it.  I pulled the truck off of the road, and was happy that I had the ground clearance that I did considering the ditch I was parked on.  I went ahead and grabbed the bag and the tripod from the cab and started to walk closer to the barn.  I parked well away since I wasn't sure where my composition would be, and I didn't want my truck in the picture.  As I got closer, I could see that there was a wooden fence that I wasn't too happy with at first.  I could deal with the barbed wire a little bit better than a large wooden slatted fence.

As I got even closer, I found that the fence just had a small section facing the road, and the rest went to the barn.  The barn was actually opened up from the road with no barriers to face.  This would be fun since I could get up close and personal with the barn.  However, the more I tried to get in close, the less appealing the pictures were.  The further back, the more unbalanced they were with the fence on the right side of the frame.  I also didn't like the full on frontal look of the barn.  I tried to move over to the right and get the fence in the frame, but it became too jumbled, and I was unable to get enough altitude on the camera to keep it from blocking key elements on the face of the barn.  I seemed to be an an impasse with compositions.  I was using my 24-70mm, and found that the focal lengths were just fine, but my location wasn't quite right.

Well, I decided to throw caution to the wind and set up square in the middle of the road.  On the double yellow line to be exact.  Yeah, I'm doing exactly what my Mother told me not to do, and what Toni would be yelling at me for doing, but after spending 17 years in a job where I've walked in the middle of the highway at rush hour, I somehow felt pretty comfortable doing this.  I composed a shot, which I really liked, and I dialed in the intensifying polarizer to bring out the color in the scene, set my exposure, and tripped the shutter.

Guarded and Weathered

This was the shot I was looking for!  The fence didn't interfere with the face of the barn, I got a leading line that made sense in the scene, and got a nice quarter view of the barn instead of a static front view.  I even got a nice balance with the bare trees on either side of the frame.  I moved the camera around a few times, and got out of the way of approaching cars a couple of times before figuring that I had the shot that I wanted.  The sun was starting to dip behind the clouds, and it was looking like I was running out of light for this scene, so I went back to the truck and broke everything down.

I ended up with 27 frames that I shot of this old barn.  In that time, I had tried about 20 individual compositions to get everything to line up just right.  I was probably there for about 35 minutes or so as the light was falling.  Once I left there, I hunted for a good location for a sunset, but found that hunt to be a moot point since the clouds were building so fast that there was not going to be any color in the sky to worry with.  I pulled out the GPS and told it to take me home.  I wasn't upset that I missed Pilot Mountain since the color and sky that I was hoping for didn't happen.

Once I started to edit the pictures, I found that most of them were not that good.  The sky wasn't right in most, the fence was in the way in others, and the composition boring in several.  There were about four pictures which really caught my eye.  Three of them were shot from the street, and the fourth was shot from the barbed wire, but lacked a strong leading line since the wooden fence exited to the left of the frame.  When it came down to it, there was a single picture that really jumped out at me.

The leading line was nearly perfect thanks to the "L" shape of the fence.  The barbed wire became insignificant to the composition.  The wooden fence skirted right under the barn, and strait to the silo.  The sky had a nice contrast to it, and nice blue tones thanks to the polarizer.  I was really happy with how this one turned out, and thanks to this one image, my driving all afternoon was well worth it.

Guarded and Weathered in B&W

Since a good many of my Winter photographs are shot with monochrome in mind, I had a pretty good idea that this would convert nicely to Black and White.  I moved it from Lightroom into Photoshop where I did the conversion.  After playing with some of the color channels, I had a really nice base for the conversion.  I tweaked some of the curves for the final presentation, which resulted in a very nice Black and White image.

Honestly, I'm not sure which I like better between the two pictures.  I'm always a fan of color photography, and like the deep saturated hues.  However, a dramatic sky is always made more appealing in monochrome.  The subject matter also lends itself to a more rudimentary presentation.  The way I see it, I have two different versions of the same image that stand equally well on their own, and that is how I will represent them in the gallery.