Saturday, April 20, 2024
Welcome back! The seasons are changing, and that means that is time to start looking for some landscapes. The last blog entry was kind of a transitional entry for me as I had gone out to do a photo session with the Miata. It served the purpose of being a palette cleanser for all the rust that I have been shooting lately. I needed to get myself in the mood for Spring and the associated colors that it brings. Oddly enough, the season is in full swing at home with the trees greening up quickly and the pollen flowing freely. The problem is, I am not a fan of the landscapes that are close by home, I like the ones that can be found further up in the mountains, which tend to be a few weeks behind in the shift to Spring. I’m sure that we are still a few weeks away from all of the blooms and full color, but I wanted to get out that way to see if I could find some Springy scenes to get myself started this year.
As it turned out, I had some free time this morning and the weather was looking like it was going to be foggy with low clouds in the mountains. This isn’t the typical Spring type of forecast, but with the trees still bare, I was really thinking that some fog might make them look great before they fill out with leaves. I knew just the place to go that had some of the most perfect trees for a foggy morning and that was the Cone Manor. I’ve been out there in the fog several times and have always come away with some really great photos. I was hoping for similar conditions and a chance to try some different types of compositions. It was going to be an early morning though as I was going to want to be on location by 6:15. This meant getting up at 4am which is one of my least favorite aspects of being a landscape photographer. There is something rather relaxing about being able to sleep in, and head out during mid-morning to get some rusty cars photographed. Working the landscape is a little different because it is so dependent on the quality of light to set the mood rather than having a subject that can serve the same purpose.
I knew that there wasn’t going to be any color during the sunrise because the clouds were going to be low, and there was supposed to be a fair amount of fog. The mood that I was going to be looking for was likely anything but Spring. Fog usually brings a nice moody look to the scene, and I was hoping for some blue hour lighting for a bit of chill to the scene. If there was any Spring color out there, I was going to have it providing that little bit of warmth in a generally cool scene. This was the vibe that I was after. It was just too early in the season to go for a cheerful landscape image, but it was a perfect opportunity to get a more somber scene captured.
I got to sleep kind of early the night before and when the clock rang at 4am, I was awake much easier than I had thought would be the case. There was no debating from the bed as to whether or not the weather was going to do right. When it comes to fog, the forecast is really hard to depend on. The best course of action is to just go and see what is there. If there was no fog, I would have clouds, and if no clouds, I would have sunshine. Essentially, I was game for whatever weather conditions happened. I just wanted to get out there and be a part of the quiet morning once again.
After I got everything done at home, I was on the way up the mountain. It was still very dark, but I was pretty sure that I was seeing some stars among the clouds overhead. There was certainly no fog present in the foothills. As I gained altitude, I still wasn’t seeing fog, but it looked like the sky was starting to cover up a bit better. Only time would tell what was actually going to be present when I arrived at my location.
To my surprise, when I entered the Blue Ridge Parkway there was no fog, and no low clouds. I had halfway been expecting a completely different weather pattern on the mountain as that is what I have come to expect. That was not the case this time though. I could still make out partly cloudy skies, but nearly unlimited visibility which was vastly different from what the forecast had suggested. I still had about 20 miles before I got to Cone Manor, which gave me plenty of time to consider my options. Fog was more than likely out of the picture (pun intended), and I was starting to actually wonder if the clouds were high enough to catch the colors of the rising sun. If they were, I could change up my plans and go for a proper sunrise location like Price Lake. There were a lot of possibilities with the weather in flux like this, but I could tell that I was disappointed in the lack of fog. There was no sense in letting that spoil the morning because this was the first time that I had done a mountain landscape session since last Fall.
When I arrived at the Manor, I pulled through the parking lot to find no other vehicles which made me happy. There was not a touch of fog, and I could tell that the clouds were well up in the atmosphere. It wasn’t looking good at all. I had in my mind some foggy trees, and a dark photo of the fence along the trail that I had shot the last time I was here. None of that was going to work with the conditions that I had, so it was off to plan B which was Price Lake only a few miles down the road.
When I pulled into the main parking lot to get an understanding of the motion in the water and how the clouds were looking, I could see folks on both shores with headlamps doing what appeared to be morse code back and forth. This was going to prove difficult to work around if I were to do anything including the shores. The water looked nice and calm which I liked, and the clouds appeared to be at the right altitude. The problem was that the clouds were now very thick and there didn’t appear to be room for the sun to poke through and provide color to the sky. I didn’t like this view without some color, or other drama in the sky, so I decided to go by the amphitheater to check out the other angles that I like to shoot while at the lake.
In my haste, I missed the turn and when I realized it and got turned back around, I decided to forego Price Lake in favor of going back to Cone Manor. The more I was thinking about it, the more I recalled how great the trail had been before and how I wished that I had worked this location more over the years. Without a solid plan in place at this point, there was no reason why I couldn’t go and work the Cone property this morning and just respond to what conditions I was given. It was kind of like a challenge of sorts and one that I enjoy giving myself. It is nice to be able to plan out a shoot, but the real reward is when you go out with no idea what to capture and still come back with good photos. I was hoping that was going to be the case with this visit.
It was only a few minutes, and I was back at the Manor. This time, I parked the truck and grabbed my gear. I walked down the steps to the stables and started along the trail towards the Parkway bridge. As I was walking, I could feel a light mist falling. This was good as it meant that I was possibly going to get my fog, but the clouds were certainly going to be in full force at least. There was also a very strong wind which I didn’t much care for because it was a cold wind. As I had just walked past where I could see my truck, I decided to play it safe and go back to get my jacket since I was planning on standing very still for a long amount of time as I made photos. I didn’t want to be cold if it could be helped.
Now that I had my jacket, I was back on the way to the bridge. When I crossed under the Parkway, I came to the composition that I wanted to shoot. There was nothing at all interesting about the scene, and the gate was open which ruined the lines I was hoping to get. A bit further up the trail was several areas that I also planned on shooting, but I could tell that the sky, nor the light was going to work for those locations. Things were very flat with the deeply overcast skies. The light was starting to increase, but it was still very much blue hour at this point. I was hoping to utilize that fact and get some landscapes that are different from what I have gotten in the past.
As I started back under the bridge headed to the bare trees by the barn, I noticed the same scene that had caught my attention the previous year. The trail made a wonderful “S” curve on the other side of the tunnel under the roadway. I had shot this very composition before, but the light wasn’t right for it now. However, I still liked how the trail looked when framed by the arch of the tunnel. I had an idea to shoot the scene from inside of the tunnel, using it as a natural frame with a heavy vignette added to the scene thanks to the deep shadow that was in the tunnel. It could very well work, so I stopped about halfway through the tunnel and pulled out the camera to check out the composition.
It showed promise in the viewfinder so I went ahead and put the camera on the tripod. Since the sun wasn’t out, and the exposure wasn’t problematic, I didn’t add any filters to the camera, it was just the body, the standard zoom, and the tripod. I worked on framing the image in a way that I thought would provide visual tension through negative space while keeping the background properly framed within the tunnel opening. I tried several different compositions and aspect ratios without being positive that any of them would work. I just wanted to have options for when I got home, so I shot all kinds of combinations while I was there.
When I realized that I had been here for a while and wasn’t really getting any changing conditions, I decided to pick up the camera and move on. I wasn’t convinced that this composition was a winner and didn’t want to miss out on something stronger, or better light somewhere else by remaining here in the hopes that I might find a slightly improved set of circumstances. I was happy that I had started to move on down the trail, but soon enough, I realized that I was right back where I had started a little while before. I was looking at the large barn and trying to make something out of it. The part that attracted me was the fact that the lights were on and shining through the windows on the side. It was the very warm light from the tungsten bulbs against the largely blue toned scene that pulled me in. I started to move around in order to find out the best angle to shoot the building from.
That angle finally presented itself after I walked away for a bit and looked back from a distance. From here, I was able to include the stone wall for a bit more visual interest, and this also allowed me to sink the bottom of the building behind the raised berm. This was beneficial because there was a large trash can sitting beside the building which would have been in the shot. While this wouldn’t have been the end of the world, I would rather cover up trans cans with other elements in the photo if at all possible. The vantage point worked out great and I was able to get the shot that I was hoping to get. The trees made it a bit busy, but they also made the sky more interesting which it really needed at this stage.
By this point, I was getting interested in the stonework for the retaining wall. I started to walk around to see if there were any compositional opportunities afforded by the wall. It seemed like I looked everywhere to no avail. It wasn’t until I started to look at the wall as I would the details on an old rusty car that something struck me as interesting. Near a reinforcement, there was a plant with yellow blooms growing from the wall in between the stones. I love seeing nature growing where it shouldn’t be, and I decided that I wanted to capture this scene.
The worst thing that I could have done here was to shoot the camera straight at the blooms using the stonework as a background. I didn’t want to have a flat image of something so vibrant as the blooms. I looked at both sides to determine where my best option was. That ended up being on the side where I could capture some of the trees in the background if I shot low enough. I set the shot up and got things lined up as I wanted, but it still looked too busy. The solution was simple and included opening up the aperture and blurring the trees enough to force the attention onto the blooms. That seemed to work, and I was very happy with how this one was looking on the back of the camera.
While I was here at the wall, I started to look for other ways that I could incorporate the trees above the wall. I walked around until I saw a grouping that appeared to be well balanced. I framed up a vertical composition and shot the photo. The image popped up on the image review and I saw a couple of small tweaks that I could make to improve the shot. Those were made and another frame fired off with even better results. Just to be sure that I exhausted all the choices, I flipped the camera horizontal and tried a version of it that way as well. It didn’t turn out so good because of some clutter in the background that I missed while framing up the shot. That didn’t worry me because the vertical shot worked very well, and I really liked how it turned out.
From here, I spent some more time working around the walls to see if there were any more shots that I would want to take. The lighting was beautiful for the detail work, and I was glad that I decided to focus on that. I was getting some decent images and felt that I was hitting my stride. However, before too long I realized that I was spending a lot of time working the little areas of the wall and I was neglecting the majority of the landscape which was starting to come to life now that the sun was up. For the first time, I could really see how much Spring had crept into the landscape. It wasn’t much, but there were blooms on the trees which added some color to the hills. With that in mind, I diverted my attention from the stone wall to the landscape proper. It was a strange shift in focus because for so long now I have been focused on the details and not the overall scene. There is a bit of recalibration that I have to go through to start seeing the world as a whole once again, but it was nice to start looking at wider areas of interest with the camera.
What I found was that the trails were looking great as leading lines through the trees and pointing to the distant ridges near the horizon. I began to focus my attention on those trails and trees which turned into a half dozen or so compositions that I worked through. Most of these compositions didn’t make the cut because I wanted there to be something special about the photo and not just a photograph with a leading line. I looked for connections between the different elements which would make a more cohesive photograph than when the elements don’t support one another. It became a game in the field to work out a meaningful composition and that game continued when I got home and started to ask if I had been successful.
The successes didn’t happen all that often unfortunately, but I did get a couple along the trail that I liked. The first one that I felt was a keeper was one that had primarily bare trees, but hints of the Spring color created a nice dichotomy within the photo. It was that difference in seasons that I had captured which added to the visual interest and made this photo one with something specific to say. It also helped that the sky was looking nice and dramatic since the clouds were still building up. What had been an overcast sky was not filled with lower level clouds that have much more texture than what I had seen to start the day out.
Those cloud weren’t really picking up much color as the sun was at the horizon, but once it had some altitude to it, the sun started to create some subtle areas of color in the clouds. I worked on finding an angle that I could capture this from and finally landed on a shot that shows the different levels to the grounds thanks to those stone retaining walls. I found a composition that used those walls as a repeating pattern through the frame that led your eyes from the foreground tree to the much smaller Dogwood in the distance. The composition looked strong in the camera, but the colors that had drawn me in weren’t showing. This is a pretty standard problem with how I have my camera set up since I am more interested in getting a good histogram than I am in seeing any particular color within the photo.
When I imported the photos into Lightroom, the colors were a little better, but still not what I had wanted to see. I did like the composition and decided to work the image through an edit. The more I worked it, the more I felt that the color wasn’t what I felt at the time. The photo wasn’t true to my intent with the camera in the form that it was taking. In order to make the photo work, I decided that I was going to bring some color into the sky through a few different tools in Lightroom. It was nothing major, and not even to the extent that I had done the sunset at Doughton Park last year. There was just a little color grading added into the photo where the photo itself was untouched. The end result was the scene that I had felt, even if it might not have been the one that was seen. It was also the only photo that showed any color in the sky which made for a nice addition to the collection from the day. It was also the only composition that was shot with any color in the sky, it was just the degree to which it was represented that changed.
By this point, I recall getting a little tired and I was starting to run into some problems with compositions. Feeling that the best thing to do was to take a break from the larger landscapes and start working details again. One area that had caught my attention was a small tin roof section under a window belonging to the barn that I had been shooting by all morning long. I loved the different lines, and from the side, the roof made a nice little triangle with a rusty tone to it. The window was a different shape added into the mix as well, which interested me. I wasn’t sure what the composition was going to be, but I knew that I was going to need a longer lens than what I was currently shooting with.
I swapped out the glass for the telephoto and started to work the angles in an attempt to find the right place to put the camera for the photo to come out like I would want it to. I played with the composition for a few minutes and finally found the organization that I liked between all of the elements. It was actually a much stronger composition than I had suspected when I came up with the idea. I threw on a polarizer to take the glare out of the tin roof and the from the glass. This deepened the colors and contrast which I thought really added to the photo. From here, I shot two different frames with a slight change in the placement of the window. It was that second one with a bit more separation that won out and became the keeper from this subject.
Here I was, once again, shooting landscapes and finding a decay subject to distract me. I guess I really do have a decay problem after all. For me, there is just something exciting about how manmade objects age. Maybe it is the fact that man ages as well that makes this so poetic to me. Whatever it is, decay is something that really appeals to me, and I think there is very little question that it trumps landscape views for me most of the time. Decay wasn’t why I was here though, and I needed to get back to the job at hand. I was supposed to be getting myself in the frame of mind to shoot landscapes again now that the Earth was waking from its winter slumber.
I moved back to an area where I had done some compositions with the standard zoom but hadn’t really liked how they turned out. This time, I left the long lens attached and moved further back to allow the compression to work its magic. I had just barely been able to avoid the tree to the right with the standard zoom, but it was much easier with the longer focal length. The background mountains were also bigger in scale within the frame which I liked. I grabbed another couple of shots here just so I had alternatives when I got home. As it turned out, it was one of these last compositions that won out because of the effect that the long lens had on the scene. I just need to remember that my favorite lens now is that telephoto. It works just as well for landscape as it does for automotive photography in many cases.
Even though I was excited about having the long lens on the camera again, I was starting to be faced with two big problems. The first problem was the rain was starting to fall heavier. I had been able to keep up with keeping the lens dried off up till now, but that was starting to get more and more difficult. The second problem was the amount of people that were now coming onto the property. The steady stream of families was a distraction to me and some of the conversations that I overheard made me question the future of humanity. Between the rain and the crowds, I was just not having fun anymore. That is the time when it makes more sense to pack up and go to another location, which is what I decided to do.
By the time I got in the truck and started back out to the Parkway, the rain started coming down in full force. I was very happy that I had decided to leave when I did because I had a very relaxed time packing the camera up. Had I waited two minutes longer, that would have not been the case. It was looking like my time on the Parkway was probably finished. The sky wasn’t looking all that great anymore, and the rain looked like it was here to stay. I took the opportunity to drive by the Honda dealership to pick up some supplies that I was going to need for an upcoming service on Toni’s car.
Once I had the shopping done, it was back down the mountain for me. The hopes were that the rain was not quite that far East, and I would have a bit more time to get some more photos before starting the editing process. The rain didn’t really let up going down the mountain, but I was having a much better time than a guy in a Mazda 3 that was driving up the mountain. I could see him coming because of the billowing white smoke from the rear of the car and as he got close to me, I heard a loud bang and saw a quick flame under the car indicating a catastrophic failure. He got pulled off on the shoulder and I saw no more smoke or fire which was a good thing.
By the time I got to the bottom of the mountain, the rain had all but stopped and I started to take side streets in search of more subjects to photograph. It wasn’t until the third or fourth one that I pulled down that I found something worth a photo. I actually remembered going down this road a couple of years ago and photographing a barn at the end of that road. When I got to the end of the road I knew that the barn would be off to the left, and it was still standing there. I could remember exactly why it had been so hard to photograph that day because I remembered where I had to stand to get the photo. I saw nothing of interest from that angle on this day though, so I went to the intersection and turned to the left. I really didn’t think much about looking at the barn because I remember that there was nothing worth photographing from that back side.
Well, as I drove by, I noticed that the sky was amazing overhead and the barn itself looked really nice from that back side. It might have been a matter of more of the barn had fallen away, or it might just be the light on it. In either case, there was something there that I wanted to photograph, but I had a large house behind the barn and a long barn to the right of it. I was restricted on where I could stand to get the shot because of a fence keeping the cows inside. I considered my options as I drove down the road for a bit further before turning around. I wanted to try and get an angle on the barn, and I didn’t think that getting into the fence was going to be necessary for what I was wanting to shoot. This meant that I wasn’t going to have to try and track down any owners since I would just be on the shoulder of the road which was fair game.
I pulled off and grabbed my camera with the standard zoom because I wanted to get the sky overhead. I used a polarizer to reduce the glare on the roof as well as bring a little contrast into the sky. I went back, well behind the truck where I thought I could get a clear shot of the barn between a bank of trees on the opposite side of the road and the house which was just out of the frame to the right. I played with the altitude of the camera to get the right perspective on the barn and started to make exposures. This was not as easy as it should have been because the sky was much brighter than the barn which gave me the perfect reverse bell curve on the histogram. This is not a good exposure reading, and there was no way to use a grad filter to correct it because the barn went completely into the sky. Any filter on the sky was going to affect the barn. The trees in the background made it to where I didn’t want to do an HDR capture for fear of ghosting in the branches. My only option was to expose it the best that I could and hope that I could make it work in post.
I exposed it all the way to the right with just a slight bit of clipping in the sky nearest the horizon. The shadows were just above the black point which meant that I was probably going to be able to recover that detail as well as the highlights. There were no midtones to speak of, so I had room to move the outlying values closer to the middle of the histogram in post. That proved to be an easier task than I had expected and once again, I was very impressed with the dynamic range of the old DLSR. One of the things that I have really worked on during the past years is stretching my ability to capture a wide range of tones in a single capture. I’ve come up with tricks that have allowed me to get an extra stop and a third worth of exposure to keep the shadow details, while not clipping the highlights beyond recovery. I do teach this method in my workshops and mentorships. I’m also planning on talking about it on my Tuesday’s Tips video coming up soon.
All that being said, I was starting to enjoy this barn and wanted to try one more angle from the intersection since there was a fence corner that I could use for a bit of balance in the scene. The sky was also looking pretty good in that direction as well. After I made the quick walk to that corner, I started to look at the compositional possibilities that were present. I had to worry about the house and the long barn behind the main subject from this angle. That was what I started to work on first. I found the right focal length so that I could get both structures hidden behind the barn. I then worked out the height of the camera so that the fence worked well with the barn.
While I was doing all of that, I kept seeing movement in the barn and realized that there were cows sleeping inside. Once I realized that was the case, I started to move very fast before they got curious. Well, I was in full view of them, and I have learned that cows are always curious when I am taking photos. Sure enough, before I even got the camera ready for that first exposure, the cows started to come out of the barn threatening to ruin the composition I had just worked out. They made it about 20 feet from the barn and stopped, with all three of them in a row. They just froze there and started watching me. I wasn’t going to look a gift cow in the mouth because they were still. Not only were they still, but they were also looking at me which made for a more engaging photo in my mind. I made a quick check of the shutter speed to make sure that I wasn’t going to get any motion and started making exposures as they moved their heads slightly. I shot this scene way more times than I needed to, but I wanted to make sure that I got one where the cows worked in the scene. Occasionally, they would move a step or two into a slightly different location, but they never moved into the area of the frame where they would provide the best visual balance. At least they weren’t overlapping and turned with their butts toward me.
After a few minutes of playing bovine chess, a truck pulled up to the intersection and paused for a very long time. I turned and waved to see if that might be the owner, but I couldn’t see past the tinted windshield if anyone was even looking at me. I just continued with what I was doing. They also stayed right there which made me a little uncomfortable with my back to them. I made the executive decision that the cows weren’t going to move significantly from where they were, and I already had about 15-20 frames of this composition. That was enough, and I was satisfied with what I had. I picked up the camera and started to slowly walk back to the truck. After about five steps, the truck went through the intersection and continued up the road. Not wanting to push my luck, I decided that I could call it a day. I had all that I needed from this barn, and looking back on the day, it had been a very productive morning. I just had to get home to see what I had that was worth keeping.
There were 94 frames that had been shot during the day. I was going to be happy with about five keepers but ended up getting twice that many overall. It was beyond productive and a great start to the landscape season of photography. This might not have been the typical Spring session, but I would rather photograph a day that most photographers would shy away from because that will make my photos unique. It was nice to be on the Parkway and not see another photographer (short of cellphone selfies). I did see a painter who was in front of the Cone Manor with her easel. I thought that was pretty cool and wondered how long she was going to be working on that piece. I also wonder if the rain caused her any problems. I would have to think that it cut her time short as it did mine.
Thank you all for joining me on this adventure, and I hope it is the start to many more landscape centered treks between now and the Fall. I’ll be doing plenty of my decay work along the way, but the fact of the matter is, decay is hard to do in the summer months, while natural landscapes are much more photogenic. Remember, if any of my photographs speak to you, I would love to help match you up with a print of your very own. You can order directly from the gallery store, or you can contact me for special orders that include larger sizes, or specialty media like metal or canvas. Not only do you get an original work of art to hang on your wall, you are also supporting my photography, which allows me to go on these treks. When it comes to this part of my photography, print sales is a big part of how I earn a living. If you don’t have the room, or the budget for a print, but would like to show your support, consider the donation button below. This will allow you to be able to contribute as much, or as little as you would like. Consider it like buying me a coffee, or maybe a lunch. However you choose to support my photography, I certainly do appreciate it. It will never go unnoticed.
I’ll see you back here again soon.
Until then….
