Saturday, May 20, 2023
I want to thank everyone that read my last blog entry from a bit over a week ago. It was certainly not a regular blog for me because I was blogging about not capturing any photographs at all. I just wanted to show everyone that not every time that I go out is a winner of a day. I’ll admit that usually after a trek like that I end up feeling a bit down, and often end up in a creative slump for a short time. Fortunately, that didn’t happen, and I was pretty sure that I would bounce back pretty quickly from the dud of a trek. I knew that I had an engagement shoot scheduled last Saturday that ended up going extremely well and the clients were very pleased with the photos. I also knew that I was going to be rather distracted during the coming days since the house was finally getting the new siding, gutters, railings, and doors after four months of planning. It has been a long week here at construction central with lots of banging going on and a good bit of stress on my part as I watched them expose all the hidden parts of the structure of the house. I’m pleased to say that things are going well, and it is looking like there are only a couple more days left before it will all be finished. While I am really glad that the job has been done, it has pretty well stalled me ability to get out and work photographs.
With them taking the weekend off, I wanted to take advantage of the lack of work to get out and do some work of my own. I’m sure that you have been paying attention to the fact that I have been doing a lot with landscapes here lately. I’ve been having a lot of fun getting back out into nature again and just being one with the world. It would only be proper for me to consider a landscape location for my next trek. The trick was going to be the weather which was being forecasted as low clouds in the morning followed by storms in the afternoon for Saturday. Sunday was going to start off with rain and go to partly cloudy skies. Wanting to get everything done before Monday rolled around, I was really needing to make Saturday morning my target date for getting some new photos. As I pondered the weather for different areas, I wasn’t really seeing much in the way of a promising recipe of light for landscapes.
My other option was to head out to a location that I have recently found which belongs to the owner of the company that is doing the renovations on the house. I have been by there a couple of times trying to get a feeling for what compositions might be there. The times that I have been by, I haven’t been inspired to create anything, but looking back that was partly because I was transitioning into my landscape phase. This location was probably going to work the best with the weather conditions that were forecasted. I resisted the temptation because I was really wanting to do more with landscapes. The only problem was, I had no idea where I wanted to go.
As Friday evening approached and the workers were winding down for the week, I started looking at the forecast a bit closer trying to figure out what might work. There was a good chance of fog in certain areas of the Blue Ridge Parkway which is always a fun element to work with. I managed to whittle it down to the area of Boone where the fog would be the best. There are a handful of good locations in that area that I liked to work with, and one of my favorites I hadn’t been to since last Fall. Thunder Hill has long been a favorite location of mine because it offers so much bang for the buck in just a single location. If it wasn’t so popular, I would consider doing a workshop here with a handful of participants, but it stays busy most of the time which makes keeping up with folks difficult. I have done a number of mentorships out here over the years which always turn out great.
With the chance of fog, I knew that there was a composition that I could work if the fog was really thick using the fence opposite of the overlook. If the fog was a bit lighter, I could go with a number of other options which gave me plenty of wiggle room with the weather. I would even be in close proximity to Price Lake if the fog failed to show up at Thunder Hill. I knew that color wasn’t going to be on the menu for the sunrise since the only clouds expected were of the low altitude variety which rarely bounce the warm light from the rising sun. I did still want to get out there for first light just in case something magical happened, which occasionally it does.
The plan was simple, wake up early enough to get there by 5:30 or so which would give me enough time to scope out the right composition before the light hit. If I were to do my math correctly, I would have to leave the house by 4:45, which meant that I was going to need to get up at 4am. Wait…4-AM?!?!? I just wanted to sleep and recover from the week of getting up early for the contractors, but as the Mandalorians would say, “This is the way.” If I was going to do landscape photos, I was going to need to get up very early and get out to the mountains before first light. It might turn out like my last adventure, but it was a risk I was going to have to take. If I didn’t go now, it would be late next week before I would have the opportunity to make it happen again. I made my peace with it and set the alarm for 4am before turning in early Friday night.
When the clock rang, I turned it off and pondered life for a few minutes before I checked the weather. Things were looking the same as I had planned for so I had no excuse to roll over and go back to sleep…no matter how much I wanted to. I got up, got dressed, made a quick breakfast and loaded the truck. I was right on schedule with my departure and before long was heading up US421 towards the Parkway once again. It was relatively clear as I was climbing the mountain until I got into Deep Gap which is notoriously foggy. The fog started to build up and I found that there was a mist associated with it which had me a little worried. I absolutely hate having to wipe my lens off before every shot and was not looking forward to that possibility. When I finally got up on the Parkway, the mist was a good bit heavier, but the fog was looking really nice, at least in places. In true NC Mountain form, the fog would come and go with varying intensities as I made my way along the road. There was just no telling what the conditions would be when I got to Thunder Hill. I just had to keep my fingers crossed.
As I crossed Aho Gap, the fog was settling in pretty well and I was having to look for landmarks to keep an idea of where I was. When I passed Raven Rocks, I started to look to the left in order to see the parking area for Thunder Hill. It almost snuck up on me, but I saw it in time to turn in. There was already an RV in the lot with no lights on, but I was the only other vehicle there. This was a good thing because I would have my pick of where to shoot which is always a good thing.
I got parked and looked around for a moment. The fog was thick to be sure. There was very limited visibility in every direction which was going to make photography hard, but not impossible. I just needed something identifiable close to the camera to make a photo work. I had the idea of using the fence already which was looking like my best choice. I grabbed my gear and started to walk across the road and up the hill. I had my flashlight out because the embankment is not the simplest thing to climb. The light helped me pick my footing and when I got up to the top, I started to walk the fence line to find a point of interest. I must have walked about 75 feet before I found my favorite section of the fence. In those 75 feet, I realized that the mist that had been falling with the fog had pretty much coated the tall grass. My shoes were soaked on the exterior and my pant legs were wet with the dew from mid shin down. This was not good because my waterproof boots were still at home. Since I wasn’t planning on doing waterfalls and didn’t plan on being out in the rain, I had just worn my hiking shoes which only held the water back for a brief time. My feet were dry, but I knew that wasn’t going to last for long.
The section of fence that I had chosen to work with just happened to be my favorite foreground element for a sweeping view of the sky to the Northeast. I’ve shot this post many times, but always from the same direction. This time, since the sky wasn’t really a concern, and I wasn’t looking for the leading line of the Parkway leading to the mountains, I decided to shoot it in the opposite direction. I could make out the foggy silhouettes of several trees beyond the fence in this direction which would become the background to my composition. I moved around briefly to look at how I wanted to create a relationship between the fence and the trees. When I finally had a good idea of where I needed to place the camera and what lens I would be using, I opened up the tripod and claimed the spot. This is a good way of reminding myself where I want to shoot from while I get the camera built. That was the next step in the process.
I put the camera bag on the very wet ground, thankful that the front of the bag had a water barrier for just this reason. I pulled out the camera and the 24-70mm lens which I haven’t been using much lately. It seemed to be the best choice for this composition though because I didn’t need the perspective of a wide-angle lens, and the compression of a longer lens would have cheated me out of some depth that I needed. The standard lens was going to be just fine for this location. There was no need for filters since the sun wasn’t really a concern and I didn’t have any detail in the sky to worry about. It was just going to be a very straightforward shot once the light levels increased.
I started to take some test shots to see how things were looking. The first one was a two-minute exposure because the light was so dim, but it allowed me to check the depth of field as well as the contrast to the scene. From there, I started to shorten the exposure as the light levels increased. Eventually, I got down to a reasonable 13 seconds at f/11 which was a pretty good exposure considering there was no breeze at all. I was looking at the image review as the shots were coming in and decided that I didn’t like the colors. Everything was just too cool with the sun behind so much fog. I made a quick change to the picture style on the camera and dialed in a black and white style using a red filter. This gave me more punch and what I thought was a better image overall. The decision was made to make this composition a black and white one.
I shot eleven frames of this composition as the sun came up. The one that you see here was the eleventh one. I saw no reason to stick with the composition because other than the shutter speed changing, there wasn’t going to be a big chance at all in the photo. It just so happens that the last frame that I shot was the one that I picked to edit and share. This one represented the culmination of a few tweaks to the composition as well as the right exposure for the black and white image that I was planning on. After all of that was ironed out, there was just no more need to continue with the composition.
As I mentioned, Thunder Hill has so many compositional possibilities that I can easily stay here for hours shooting. However, the dense fog was making things difficult for me with my normal group of compositions. I took a step back from the camera and looked around to see what caught my eye. The only thing that I could come up with was in the very tall grass back across the street. There were some very interesting trees in the fog, and I really liked how the tall grass glistened with the morning dew. I was sure that I was going to find a composition or two over there. I was also positive that my shoes would become waterlogged within minutes of working in that area. I felt it was worth it, so I grabbed everything and crossed the street.
The first subject that I saw was a small sapling tree set off from the rest of the trees in the background. There wasn’t much to it, but it gave a nice visual anchor to the scene that was largely about the dew on the grass. The other trees all formed the background to the image which became a game of find shapes that went with the smaller tree in the foreground. When I finally found one that I liked as a compliment to the sapling, I started to form up the composition. I wanted the two trees diagonally opposed for some visual interest. I decided that I needed the foreground tree to overlap the background trees slightly to show a connection with them. In order to keep things separate and simplified, I went with a narrow depth of field to blur the background slightly. F/5.6 did the trick and allowed me to get the sapling and the grass tack sharp while the trees in the background went noticeably soft. It was a subtle technique but one that I thought would work well here.
Looking at the image on the image review, I was rather excited about it and felt that I was onto something better than the composition that I had started the day out with. This happens a lot of times and I’m used to it. The starting composition is just something to get me going with the day. Once that first shot is in the bag, I feel that I am able to be even more creative which is how the morning developed. I saw so much potential in the woodland type image that I was working on which was far and away much different than the photographs that I usually get here. I just rolled with it and started moving from place to place figuring out different compositions.
As I had anticipated, everything from my shins down were soaked through and through. I could actually feel the water sloshing in my shoes which was just not comfortable at all. However, I knew that in order to get the shots, I was going to have to suck it up and deal with the wet feet. Honestly, before too long, I had forgotten all about my feet because I was having so much fun getting different compositions. Not all of them worked out, and I went through a string of them using some rocks and a patch of tall trees that just didn’t quite make sense to me after I captured them. Looking at them on the computer, they were really not good photos, so I ditched that whole series. They did lead me to what actually worked very well in short order.
It has really been a long time since I have done woodland photos on a serious level. I guess that is because of a couple of different reasons. First of all, I don’t like the woodland scenes around here as much as I want to when it comes to that kind of photography. All of our woodlands are old growth with a lot of undergrowth to deal with. I like woodlands that are a little less complex. The other reason is kind of related to the first one. Woodland photography in NC is kind of difficult to work through. One of the things that seems to help the most is a good foggy day which was exactly what I was experiencing. The fog helps to simplify the scene and it adds so much depth and separation to the images.
With this in mind, I moved in close to the tree line and started looking for unique and interesting trees. The key is to find relationships between trees to tell the story. That was what I was looking for, and I happened to find two trees that shared a relationship. One of them was a very simple tree, but the one next to it was very complex with multiple branches appearing down low on the trunk. The contrast in complexity made for an interesting paring and I liked that I was able to place another tree right between them in the background for a bit of depth to the scene.
I spent a few minutes dialing in the composition before starting the exposures. Woodland photography is all about very minute movements with the camera to get thing positioned exactly right. That was where most of my time was spent with this. Then I would take a handful of exposures as the breeze died down. It wasn’t a bad breeze at all, but there was movement now which hadn’t been an issue before. I was still shooting at ISO100 with a shutter speed of 1.6 seconds. As long as I was careful about when I pressed the button, I wasn’t really having any problems getting the scene to render sharp and free of motion. I just wanted to have options when I got home and started editing in case there was a leaf that was blurred in one, but not the other.
Things were starting to move quickly at this point. I was only shooting about three frames per composition and then I was moving on to the next one. The light was very stable which meant that there was no need to wait for that light to change, or to take multiple exposures with the hope that the last shot was the best light. It was all about composition and finding interesting subjects along the wood line. The one thing that I really do like about this type of photography is the limited depth of field that I get to play with. Normally in landscape photography, I am looking for sharp focus from near to far with each of the photographs. I can just about do that task with one hand tied behind my back. This allows me to play with the wider apertures for a change which is a really fun thing to do with a camera. The limited depth of field really directs the viewer where to look in the image.
In addition to finding interesting pairings of trees, I also kept my eyes out for single trees that had interesting shapes, or maybe that they played with the background in a certain way. The photo above was one of those cases where the tree just had a very pleasing shape to it. There was a bit of contrapposto posing going on with the tree that caught my eye. I’m sure that this has a lot to do with learning posing for my portraiture work, but the shape is certainly elegant whether on a person, or a tree. To make sure that the shape of the tree was given full attention in the frame, I decided to center it, just like I would a person doing the same pose. With the shallow depth of field, the tree quite literally takes center stage in the frame. The formula works for that pose, so why not use it for the landscape variation as well?
Another variation on that theme happened with the next composition. I found a tree that stood out from the crowd and started to find a background that worked with it. The tree had a “Y” shape to it which allowed me to place another straight tree inside the “Y” so that it was framed. This allowed me to overlap the trunks for a bit of simplicity and then I centered the whole composition in the frame along with using a shallow depth of field to complete the look. The idea is to have layers of interest within the photo so it can be enjoyed several different ways. These definitely turned out to be some of my stronger woodland images after having taken a break from them for quite some time now. It wasn’t so much a matter of being inspired to create woodland photographs as much as it was the light was just perfect for them.
The thing with photography is that it is rarely about what you have in mind as much as it is adapting to the light that you have. As long as you are in a receptive place creatively, you can read the light and interpret it within your photos. As they say, “there is no bad light”, but there are bad ways of using the light that you have. In all my years of doing photography, I’ve proven time and time again that if I am in a truly creative place, I can create no matter what the light is. That being said, it is always nice to have wonderful light like I had for this session at Thunder Hill.
By this point in the morning, I had 42 images captured. I easily could have called it day and went home to process the images. That has been the norm here lately when I have done landscapes. I would shoot one location and then go home. Those times the light was fleeting and once it happened, it was over. I could tell that the weather that I was seeing currently was going to have long lasting light and as I already mentioned, it was truly gorgeous light. With that in mind, I chose to hang around on the Parkway for a bit longer to see if I could capture anything else. I broke the camera down and loaded it back up into the bag. Once I put it in the truck, I started to think about where else I would like to go.
I knew that the chance for grand landscapes was slim, so I didn’t even consider that as an option. The weather was perfect for a waterfall, but I didn’t really have the footwear for a waterfall. Even though my hiking shoes were soaked, and my socks could have been wrung out, I didn’t want to go standing in the water for photos of waterfalls. There were also not that many close by. Well, there was the Cascades at EB Jeffress Park which was only about 15 minutes away. It has been years since I’ve photographed that waterfall, and looking at the fog, I thought that today would be a very good day to give it a try.
The Cascades are not really a great waterfall as it is just a very long series of cascades with a viewing platform at the top and then again about 50 feet below that where the main drop was. The compositions were very limited, but in all my time photographing it, I had never really gotten a truly special image of it. Who knows, with the fog and my newfound theories on waterfall photography, I might be able to get that stand-out image today. With my destination set, I started down the road to get to the park. Only I had forgotten that the Parkway was close Northbound past US421. It was going to be a matter of where exactly it was closed off as to whether or not I was going to be able to get to the park.
The warning signs were all up and active leading to the exit to US421 indicating that this was the time to exit the Parkway. From experience, I know that even though it looks like the road is about to close, it might still be quite a number of miles up the road before it actually is closed. I just kept on chugging along hoping to get to the park before the gates prevented me from continuing. I was very happy to find out that the closure wasn’t prior to the park entrance, so I was able to pull in and set out on the short hike to the falls. I was also very lucky to be the only one in the parking lot when I arrived which meant that I would probably have no problems getting into position at the waterfall.
The park was still fully fogged in and I was very hopeful for some great atmosphere to be had with the waterfall. The hike went very quick, and I started to be able to hear the falls from the trail. This is always an exciting time for me as I start to listen to the waterfall for clues about how it wants to be captured. I could tell that the water levels were decent this time which I wasn’t exactly sure would be the case. This meant that I was going to have a lot of different options as to how I could photograph it. When I got to the top of the falls, I started to go down the trail and found something that I usually don’t see on trails this far in. Right at the split that I would normally take to get to the lower section was a large DOT sign that indicated that the “road was closed.” Since somebody had gone through the effort of bringing that huge roadblock sign down the trail, I figured there was a good reason for it being there. Even though I thought briefly about going around it, I decided against it because I try to do the right things when I’m in the woods.
While I was a bit disappointed, I decided to go to the top of the falls to see if there was something there that I could work with. When I got there, I was immediately reminded about a time that Toni and I had come here on a date many years ago. Of course, it was a trek of mine that she came along on. During this trek, I stopped at this section and worked a few photos out. Being much younger and a little less aware of my mortality, I had crossed the wall and was standing on a ledge by the water. I needed to switch lenses to get the right composition, so I handed Toni the lens that I had been using as she handed me the new one. I placed the tail cap on it loosely as I handed it to her, bottom up. Well, she got it and promptly turned it to its side resulting in a plastic “ding” as the tail cap dropped off and hit the rock. It was too late to do anything about it. I just listened to it bouncing down the rocks to the base of the falls some hundred or so feet down. She was terribly upset about this, and it has become a funny story years later for both of us to tell. I can’t come here without thinking about the lost cap, and wondering if anyone has ever come across it.
Anyway, I am older and more cautious now so I stayed on the correct side of the wall and used a longer lens this time. I knew that the trick wasn’t going to be getting the whole upper section of the waterfall. Instead, I looked for isolations that might work. I found one section which I liked and framed up a shot with it. I got a loose, horizontal composition working so that I could dial in the exposure. The weather conditions were keeping the light levels low which years ago would have been a great thing. I could have shot this with a seven second exposure with no problems at all. These days, that would be overkill resulting in featureless water that looked more like milk that rushing water. I needed to get a faster shutter speed for this water which was moving at a pretty fast clip.
I had a polarizer on my telephoto lens which I think is necessary any time I am photographing waterfalls. That takes about a stop and a half of light away, which was forcing some very long shutter speeds. My only option was to boost the ISO which I did. I ended up finding a happy spot at ISO 800, f/5, and 1/8 of a second for the exposure. I didn’t want to use f/5, but to keep from having to go higher on ISO, that was my compromise. I didn’t need the nearest part of the image in sharp focus since it was moving water anyway. As I started to make exposures that counted, I adjusted the composition for the best use of the water. The more I messed with the framing, the more I started not to like the composition at all. I was about to give up on it but decided to flip the camera vertical to see if that changed anything. Once I did that, the composition started to make more sense. I had a small branch with leaves leaning down towards the water which turned into the main element for the image. The vertical composition created the right frame for that to take place and everything just came together. I just had to grab several images as the water changed shapes through the cascades.
After I was happy with that vertical composition, I moved to another location a few feet over and found another area of interest that I wanted to photograph. This one was definitely going to be a horizontal composition, and I even found that in order to get the entire scene in the frame the way I wanted, I needed to make this a 16:9 aspect ratio which I did in camera. The whole image was anchored by a rock that was in the path of the water. It had another smaller waterfall flowing over it as well as a bit of moss for added interest. The lighting was slightly different here, and I wanted a slightly different shutter speed for the water here. I ended up staying with ISO800 but stopped down to f/6.3 at 1/6 of a second. That seemed to do the trick.
I tried several variations on this section before deciding to call it a day. My arms were getting tired of holding my had over the lens to protect the filter from the dripping water from the trees overhead. Like I said, I hate wiping down the lens before every shot, so I do everything that I can to keep that front element from getting wet. I took a quick look around and determined that there was nothing else that I wanted to photograph so I packed up the camera before starting back up the trail.
I hated that I didn’t have the opportunity to go down to the main drop, but I was also kind of thankful of that because I knew if I had been able to go there, I would have bypassed this section without a second thought. There is something to be said for fate putting you in a location because I ended up with two compositions which I have never tried before. There isn’t anything particularly complex about what I did, but both of them tell a different story of this waterfall than I have seen in the past. Doing things differently is always a good plan when the opportunity is there. I can say that I have come home with some unique images, at least from my experience with this waterfall over the years.
As I was walking down the path back to the truck, I couldn’t help but notice that the sun was starting to add some really nice light to the woodland. It was warm light, and very diffused thanks to the fog. It was almost an ethereal look as I walked through. As always, I had my eyes open for any other photos and was hoping to find something where I could take advantage of this light. Near the end of the trail, I saw a section open up with some really nice and vibrant colors on either side of the trail. I stopped and pondered the potential of this location. The light was too good to pass up on, so I pulled my bag off and put it out of the way. I started to move the tripod around in an attempt to find a good spot to put the camera. In a minute or two, I had a spot picked out and decided that the 24-70mm lens would be the best choice for what I had in mind.
I pulled that out and fitted it with the polarizer before putting it on the camera. Once I had it on the tripod, I realized that the shot wasn’t going to work as I had planned. I started doing the tripod shuffle as I tried to get the elements in the scene organized in the best way. I knew that I wanted the bush with the pink blooms to the right as a foreground and the trail going off into the foggy distance. There were two large trees on either side of the trail that I wanted to use to frame the composition as well. It took longer than I thought it should have to arrive at the right composition for the scene. Once I had it, I started to make exposures with slightly different exposures, and depth of field. I would also move the camera around slightly, just to make sure that I had plenty of options to look at when I got home.
I do like consistent light with landscape photography. It allows me to work with different compositions rather than committing to a composition and waiting for the light to do things. There was very little change in the light which gave me plenty of time to work through different variations on the base composition. I ended up shooting 11 different frames with this scene and the keeper of the bunch happened very early in the series. This one is number four and it had the best combination of elements as a whole while the later ones had certain things that worked better, but others that didn’t quite work as well.
Even though it took me a while to work through this composition, it was very much worth it in the end. I’m not 100% sure, but I think that this is my all-time favorite trail photo that I’ve shot. If it turns out not to be my favorite, I think that it will be a number two favorite without question. I do really love the saturated colors here and the textures of all the leaves. It just looks so inviting and is just about exactly how I saw the trail in front of me as I was hiking back to the truck.
As I was finishing up with this photo and putting my gear up, I heard animals coming through the woods. They seemed to be coming right towards me which usually doesn’t happen. I saw one, and then another dog coming down the trail. I had not seen any other hikers at all since I had been out here, so I was a little worried that the dogs had gotten away from their owner. That fear was squashed a minute later as the owner came down the trail. We chatted briefly before he continued down the trail again. I took a leisurely stroll in case the wonderful lighting yielded any other photographic opportunities. Sadly, I saw nothing else before getting to the parking lot.
I did spend some time in the parking lot looking for other compositions without success. After about 10 minutes milling around, I decided to take my wet feet back to the truck. Fortunately, the trail had been gravel and dirt for the most part which meant that I wasn’t walking through tall wet grass which was helping to keep my feet from getting worse, but they were so wet, there wasn’t much help for them except for getting my shoes and socks off. I wasn’t able to do that just yet because I had nothing to put my feet in if I did. I was just going to have to suck it up and wait until I got home.
While driving back down the road to US421, I happened to think about one of my favorite giant trees which I’ve photographed a number of times over the years. It is near the Osborn Mountain Overlook, and I know that it always looks good in the fog. The fog was starting to fade off, but I still wanted to see what it was looking like currently with its Spring clothing on. It wasn’t but maybe a mile out of my way so there was no reason not to go by and give it a look.
I arrived in short order and took a quick look at the tree. It looked as good as it ever did, and I decided to give it another try. I pulled the camera out with the wide-angle lens attached. I put the polarizer on again just to get a little extra punch in the foliage. It took me a minute to determine the composition that I wanted to shoot, but once I landed on it, I was very happy with it. The wind was starting to be a problem again which forced my hand with the ISO. This time I was comfortable with ISO400 at f/13 which gave me a shutter speed of 0.4 seconds which was enough to freeze the leaves if I timed the exposure correctly with the breeze. I did shoot a number of variations with slightly different compositions and duplicates for the wind concerns. When I was finished, I had a total of 117 frames saved on the memory cards. It had been a very eventful morning on the Parkway.
I started to work my way home after this tree, and I was very satisfied with how the day had gone. I had gotten up very early and caught a sunrise that provided some unique images for my catalog which I really liked. My feet had gotten soaked hours ago and were freezing now. I had the heat going with the A/C activated in hopes of starting to dry out the shoes. It was a quarter of 10 in the morning, some four hours after I had started my adventure. I think it was my longest landscape trek so far this year. I was looking forward to getting home and processing what turned into nine keeper images.
This is normally the part where I start to tell you about how purchasing a print is the best way to enjoy these photographs as well as providing some financial support for my business. I might also get into my mentorship programs, or possibly my portrait services. I would end by saying something like I’m sure that I will be getting back out there again soon, so keep an eye out for another blog. All of these things are the normal ways of ending a blog, but I’m going to wrap this one up a bit different.
You see, while coming down the mountain, I saw some of the best clouds in the sky that I had seen in a while. It got me considering my alternate location which I might have just as easily picked over Thunder Hill this morning. I wasn’t exactly in the mindset for photographing decay subjects, but I just couldn’t pass up on this sky. I made the decision to take my wet feet out to Hays and take the owner up on the offer for me to do a little photography on his property. I figured that I would probably shoot another handful of compositions and still be back home before lunch.
I’ll let you in on a little secret. Part two of my morning became the main even of the day. There are more than a couple of new photos that I will be sharing with you, but I’m not going to do it tonight. It is already after midnight and I’ve been up far too long at this point. I have the photos edited and ready to share, but I will get started on that blog entry tomorrow morning when I wake up. I’ll just leave you wondering just how many new images are on the way, and what all I found.
So, until tomorrow….
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