Sunday, November 2, 2025
You don’t need to remind me that I have been rather absent from the blog here lately. I’ve been keenly aware of that fact, and if you have had a chance to read through my last Behind the Camera, you will know what has been going on which has prevented me from spending much time out looking for landscape and decay photos. It occurred to me that during the month of October, I went out on a normal trek exactly one time and that was primarily to scout a location for an upcoming portrait session that was going to be at the location. I’ll be the first to admit that this is just not normal for me since Fall and Winter are my favorite times to get out with the camera. Even last year after having a prolonged creative slump, I was out during October rather regularly. The focus this Fall has been to concentrate on my portraiture more than anything and I’ll get into the why in my year-end review that will be published on January 1st. I’ll say this much about it though, I have realized that I need to change some things up because I’m just capturing photographs for social media at this point and that is getting to be less and less worth my time. I still enjoy going out for photos and will continue that, but I’m really trying to build something sustainable here when it comes to photography.
That being said, now that most of my scheduled sessions are finished and the photos delivered, I felt like I needed to get out to capture a bit of the Fall color before it was all gone. With one more session scheduled this coming weekend, I had a bit of time before I needed to put the studio together and with the clouds coming in through the day on Sunday, that seemed like the best time to go out and try for some photos. I was really leaning towards doing some landscape work since my last two treks have been dealing with landscapes and I’ve really enjoyed doing that for a chance of pace from my decay work. The mountains were pretty much off the table because they are all well past peak for the colors. That left around home and going East for possible locations.
I spent Saturday considering my options and where I might like to go. It had been so long since I’ve gone through this part of the planning stages, I really had no idea where I might want to go. The only thing that jumped into my head was Shacktown Falls, or Shore Styers Mill Falls as some know it by. It has been nearly two years since I last went there with Toni, and it is such a unique waterfall since it is located in the Piedmont. I’ve photographed this waterfall many times over the years from all different vantage points, but most of the recent times the water flow has been such that I have been kind of restricted as to where I could set up due to deep water and rapids. Several days ago, I saw a post from Jeff Silkstone who had recently visited this waterfall. I recognized the location immediately and complimented him on his composition. It was something that I hadn’t seen in a very long time, and it reminded me how good the view was from on the side of the falls. Since the water flow was probably reduced due to a lack of rain here recently, I figured that I might be able to get up on that ledge easy enough. With the clouds forecasted for Sunday, that was going to be a pretty good plan.
With the clocks falling back an hour on Saturday night, it was a little easier to get up early in the morning to get ready to head out for a quick trek. I wasn’t needing to get up for sunrise or anything, but I had about two hours’ worth of work to take care of down in the studio before I would be able to go. I was wanting to get out there around 9am when the clouds were supposed to be at their thickest before they started to break up in the afternoon. As I went to bed, the forecast was really looking decent for the morning and that was when I needed to be out there.
When the clock rang at 6am, I checked the weather, and it was showing fair conditions currently which was not ideal. The clouds were coming in later in the day, and that pushed my plans back a good bit. I wanted to get out before the sun moved over to the Western side of the sky because I wanted to have the sun behind me for some directional light on the falls in the direction that I was shooting them in. With no need to get up that early, I rolled back over and slept in a bit more. When I finally got out of bed, I looked at the weather again and it was showing clear skies yet again and I wasn’t really able to tell by looking outside what it was doing. I just went about my morning routine and happened to see on the computer that the weather icon at the bottom was showing cloudy skies. I checked the phone’s weather apps, and both were saying clear skies. I went upstairs and looked out of the window and saw good light and some clouds overhead. It was enough to get me motivated to go out and to give it a try.
As I was driving down the road, I was looking at the sky and I could see clouds all around me, but they were thinning to the East which was not ideal. I was this far into it, and I had an alternate plan to try for some barns in Yadkin County while I was out there if the clouds didn’t hold for me. The closer I got the less clouds I saw overhead, but the light was still rather soft which would work out nicely and keep the exposures nice. Since I was feeling waterfalls, that was where I decided to start off for the day.
When I pulled into the parking area, there was one other car there and it looked like they were packing up and leaving which was a good sign. I got parked and grabbed my gear to walk down to the falls. It was a short hike, and I could see the falls from the parking area. I started off on the lower level beach looking for compositions. From here, things were rather straight and boring. I knew that I needed to get up to the middle level which was going to be a bit of rock hopping and some climbing. It wasn’t too bad at all, and it wasn’t until after I got up there that I realized that there was now a rough trail cut through the woods that would have been much easier. Oh well, I was here and had stayed upright and dry which was a win all the way around. I started to look to see what my compositional options were going to be only to find the far half of the waterfall now in full sun and rather bright. The nearest part that was going to be my visual anchor for the whole scene was in shadows which was not idea. There were very few clouds overhead to offer cover for the sun, so I was going to have to work with what I had.
It was far from ideal, and had it not been for the colorful leaves all along the background that would certainly be gone in the next week, I might have abandoned the shoot and moved onto something else. With the leaves there for a short time more, I was kind of forced to make this happen today. The last time I had shot this waterfall during the peak of Fall was the first time I had visited possibly in 2007. I know that there was a full viewing platform that was still there but has been removed many years ago. I was still using my Sony F-828 camera and remember vividly stacking like three filters on the lens to get the shot that I wanted. It was decent, but nothing special by my current standards. I was looking to get something better than that this time even with the bright sunlight.
Normally, I shy away from sunny days and waterfalls because the highlights that are created can be distracting from the overall image and the deeper shadows create too much negative space for me. I had options here as there were interesting parts of the waterfall that were in the shadows, and I also liked the areas that were in full sun as isolations. If I worked the sections out based on the lighting, I might be able to get something accomplished while I was here. However, I felt I owed it to myself to try and get the full waterfall while I was here to showcase the leaves on the opposite shore.
I fitted my wide-angle lens and started to compose the shot that I had in mind. Shortly after I had it worked out in the camera and was thinking about adding a grad filter to control the exposure on the far half of the falls, I noticed that there were some thin clouds that were coming overhead. It was just enough to knock back the contrast of the scene long enough for me to get a few frames in with some different shutter speeds. The lighting wasn’t ideal, but I was pretty sure that I would be able to even it out in post since the exposure values were close to being right in the shadows and highlights. I didn’t spend much time working with the overall composition though because the light was telling me to isolate sections of the falls for the better photos.
There is a section of the waterfall that has very prominent layers which show in just about any flow. They were there today, and I liked how the water looked flowing over them, so I swapped out my lens for the 70-200mm which was barely going to reach that section. I could have used the extender, but I decided against it so that the flowing water under my tripod wouldn’t be as much of a problem for vibrations. Using the extender makes having a stable platform essential and any movement or vibration at all will ruin the photo. Knowing that I was drawing out the shutter speed in addition, I wanted to keep things as stable as I could, so keeping the focal length at 200mm was going to be my solution.
It worked well enough and I was able to get several variations on that composition which I thought turned out really strong in the camera. By the time I started to look at them on the computer, I was not nearly as happy with them. In fact, initially, I had decided to trash all of them even though I had started to work one in black and white. It wasn’t until after I came back down after dinner that I looked at them once again and realized that the one that I had started processing just wasn’t good, but one that I had set aside for color processing had shown promise for a black and white conversion. I went ahead and did the conversion and found that I liked it quite a bit. It was good enough to remain in the keeper stack for the day.
The better compositions were still to come, though. As I still had the long lens on, I was looking around for isolations that I could shoot in the existing sunlight. One area that I liked was the top of the falls on the side where I was at. It was in the shade, but the trees in the background were in full sun and I liked the contrast. I started to work out the framing with the long lens and found a composition that I liked. It was kind of based on a fallen leaf that was positioned on the rock. I assure you that I did not place it there, but having seen it, I wanted to incorporate it into a composition or two. The contrast over the scene was too much for the camera to comfortably capture, so I had to turn around and carefully dig out a grad filter to slide into the filter holder. This was not easy because I was standing on loose and wet rocks. Falling was not something that I wanted to do today, so I was very careful in any movements that I made.
When I got the filter slid in, I got ready to get the photos and realized that there was motion in the background that I wasn’t able to explain. I pulled away from the camera and saw a lady standing at the top just inside of my frame. I had to wait until she was done taking her photo and moved along before I could get my photo. Once she backed out of the frame, I fired off the shot and liked what I saw in the image review. I tried to make the composition better, but found that I was at the widest focal length of the lens and I wasn’t able to back up any more. I had to turn around and switch out my lenses to get something a bit better suited to what I was trying to accomplish.
It was not easy changing out lenses as well as changing up the filters on the rocks. I just took it slowly, and mounted my standard zoom which would give me a bit more room to work out the composition. The clouds were now over the sun, so I was able to ditch the grad filter and just stick with the polarizer. I moved the camera into a better position and lined up the shot and realized that the lady that was in the original composition was now just visible in this one through the trees. I had to wait another couple of minutes before she walked out of the frame. The entire time I was sure that the sun was going to come back with a vengeance and mess up my exposure. Fortunately, it didn’t and I was able to get the shot that I had in mind. This one looked fantastic in the image review, and even when I got it into the computer later in the day, it was one of my early favorites.
This was the first image that I processed out of the day’s shots and it kind of set the tone for what I expected out of the other photos from the waterfall. I liked the directness of this one and the way that the trees glowed behind the falls. The shade over the water gave a nice cooling effect to the foreground that transitioned into a very warm look which gave the overall photo a wonderful color contrast. I think that I hit this at the perfect time for the colors and had I waited just a few more days, all that color would have been replaced by gray texture from bare branches. I’m really glad I decided to come out here today if for no other reason than to have gotten this shot.
With the sun still behind the clouds, I started to look around to see if there was anything else that I could take advantage of. The first thought that came to mind was the overall composition that I had done to start out the day. I knew that the lighting wasn’t quite ideal when I had shot it then. Now, the light was looking better, and I started to get the composition dialed in. I was using the standard zoom at this point and didn’t want to waste time changing lenses again, so I just worked with what I had.
The trick here was moving back as far as I could and elevating the camera just above eye level. That seemed to get me in the ballpark of what I was wanting to capture. I already knew the exposure settings that I wanted to use because they were essentially the same as what I had just shot. I fired off the first of several frames as I worked on getting things dialed in to control the highlights on the far side which was still out of the shadows and therefore a bit brighter. It didn’t take but a few seconds to get the exposure dialed in just right and I shot a couple of frames to take into account the changing lighting on the scene.
The lighting was better with this composition, but the overall composition wasn’t quite as effective as the first one. When it came time to cull through the images, I had one from each part of the session in the stack to look at processing. I had worked the more difficult one first to see if it could be done. I had arrived at a final result that I could live with for that wider composition and felt that it was superior to the tighter crop with the standard zoom lens. However, as I was going back through the images one last time before sending them into Photoshop to get ready for upload, I stopped at that tighter composition and wondered what it would look like in black and white. The biggest factor in that choice was the fact that most of the color was missing from this frame due to the tighter cropping. Without worrying about the Fall color, I was free to do this as a black and white and thought that it might just work well in that presentation because of how large the cascades were within the frame.
After a few minutes, I could tell that I was onto something good with this and kept moving through the edit. In the end, I was happy with what I was seeing and felt that this was a much better way of presenting this composition. It really showcased the textures of the water and the rocks which I really liked.
When I was done with this composition while still in the field, I started to look around for other choices and decided that I would actually go back to the wide-angle lens to recreate the opening shot that I had done. Sadly, by the time I had gotten the lens fitted and back on the tripod, the sun was brighter than it had ever been. Looking up, I could see no more clouds in the sky anywhere near the sun. That meant that my time here was over. It was time to pack up and take the easier way back to the truck. I sent Toni a text to let her know that the sun was cutting my time short here and she said that hopefully I could find something on the way home. The sky wasn’t looking promising, but I knew that I would be looking on the way home just in case. There were some barns that I had wanted to photograph a bit further West from here and it would be easy enough to go back home via that route.
It didn’t take long to get into the area that I was planning on hunting in. The problem was that there was nothing but bright sunlight all around which really made it doubtful that I would find anything worth photographing. I could at least do a little scouting since the last time I had been through this area was when I had ended up changing a tire for one of Toni’s coworkers a couple of months ago. This was the area where the car had been left, and I had seen a good bit of potential out that way. Once I was firmly into the area, I started using my typical clues to determine where I was going to turn next. There are always little clues that can be spotted that will lead you to some pretty good subjects.
After making one of the turns, I spotted a barn on the side of the road, but it was mostly silhouetted by the sun in the background, so I didn’t pay too much attention to it from this direction. However, as I was passing it, I wanted to see what the lit side would look like figuring it would be less interesting being the back side of the barn. There was also a tree just to the side of it which would make getting a good photograph difficult. It wasn’t until I looked in the mirror that I saw how the light was hitting the back side of the barn. It was beautiful and there were clouds overhead for added interest in the sky. The tree wasn’t too much of a problem and I was thinking that I could still get a good angle on the barn even with the tree there.
The quick look was good enough for me to get turned around and go back for a second look. This time, I approached from the tree side and felt that the tree was going to cause problems for me. I slowed but didn’t really think that I would be stopping. However, as I got nearly to the side of the barn, I saw a potential composition that had a nice angle on the barn and no tree involved. I stopped and backed up a bit to confirm my thoughts. Yep, I was pretty sure that this was going to work out. I got turned around again and parked on the opposite side of the road because I was sure that was where I would be shooting from.
When I got parked, I got out and looked at the scene a bit more critically. It was nice, and I was glad that I had stopped. I changed my mind on how I wanted to capture this and got the camera with the wide-angle lens attached. I wanted to get in close and frame it without the road in the shot. After clipping on my polarizer, I walked across the street and started to frame up the shot. It was too close, and I didn’t like the perspective at all. In fact, I didn’t like how this lens featured the barn at all. I went back to the truck to get the standard zoom which had been my original thought. Once I had that lens on the camera, I set up the shot from the opposite side of the road which included the road as a diagonal element within the frame. I really liked how that worked and it added a bit of depth to the scene that wasn’t there originally. I had to be careful about how much I included because just out of the frame was a road sign and a house could be seen. I didn’t want those elements in the frame as I wanted the focus to be on the barn and the sky most of all. This seemed to work out, but I wasn’t convinced that the road was a good addition to the frame after looking at the image review.
There was no way to crop the road out from where I was standing, the only way to eliminate the road was to cross the street again and compose from the same side as the barn. This had not worked with the wide-angle lens, and I wasn’t quite sure how it was going to look with this lens. I decided to give it a try just to see. I started out a bit further away from the barn than I had originally which allowed for a bit more compression to the scene. The angle was different as well as I was shooting from essentially under the tree at this point. It took some doing to get the different elements to work together in scale, but once I had it figured out in the camera, I was set to make some photos.
It was the textures in the sky that really pulled the image together for me. I liked the puffy clouds that seemed to lead the eyes to the barn and then there were some wispy, thin clouds right above the barn which just added to the textures and depth. It was a toss-up as to which composition I liked better and all during the processing phase, I was going back and forth between them as to which one I liked better. In those kinds of circumstances I will usually just include them both as keepers and let time sort them out. There was really no extra time needed as the processing had been done on both of the photos. All that would be added would be a few paragraphs here in the blog.
I figured that after a month of pretty much not hearing from me, you would be missing me, and a few extra paragraphs might be just what you were looking for.
There was still the matter of the tree that I had been avoiding. There was still a good bit of Fall color around the lower portion of the tree and I kind of wanted to capture that along with the barn. There was no way to include it from the area that I had been working in. It was just too far away to show a relation to the barn. Also, by getting an angle that would put the tree closer to the barn, I would be including a lot of elements that I didn’t want to have in the frame. I just walked around to see if there was something else that I could do. When I got to the other side of the tree and started to look back towards the barn, I could see something developing. I could place the most interesting part of the tree in the left third of the frame as a foreground interest with the branches framing the barn. I could then use that same tree to block the view of the road, houses, power lines, and street signs. In fact, the tree made my life quite easy once I got the idea on the composition.
The only thing that I didn’t really care for was that I was shooting the barn straight on which only showed a single side of it. This is not usually good because it robs the image of depth. I decided that having the tree in the frame where I did was enough to introduce depth to the scene, and the simplistic shape of the barn would work as a midground element. The overall relationship between the main elements was too good to pass up I thought.
It didn’t take long for me to get the composition fine-tuned and shot. By this point, the sunlight that I was needing to illuminate the barn as starting to fade behind the clouds. Yes, I get the irony that I when I have clouds, I want the direct sunlight, and when I have sunlight, I want clouds. In this situation, it was the sunlight on the barn that had prompted me to stop here in the first place. Without the light, the scene was very flat and not that interesting. If I stop somewhere because of the existing light, I tend to lose interest when the light changes no matter what it started out as. In this situation I wanted the sunlight, that same sunlight that proved so problematic for the waterfall I had started out at. Different strokes for different subjects as they say.
With the good light on this scene at an end, I got the camera put back in the bag and started on my way back home. I was still looking but was comfortable that I had a few photos to work with when I got home. I didn’t want anything major because I was going to be starting to put a studio together very soon and needed to focus on that session more than doing a very long blog, or one that was multiple parts long. It was just good to get out again with the old DLSR camera after working so much with the mirrorless.
I just headed in the rough direction of home and eventually ended back out on Old 421 which I was very familiar with. I moved down to Hoots Rd and took it for a while until I decided that I would just get on the main highway and call it a day. The clouds were looking good, but I was getting tired and ready to get home to see what I had captured for the hours that I had been out. However, when I got into Wilkes County, I recalled a spot that I had shot back in the Summer which I had been by a couple of days ago. The scene had changed quite a bit since the Summer, and I could now see all of the Pontiac in front of the store. I hadn’t really had any plans on going back to shoot it again since the van that the brush had successfully hidden was in full view without that brush. The idea of being able to see more of the car was interesting to me and I decided that since I was going right past it anyway, I might as well stop and see if there was anything else that I could do with it.
The exit was just a few miles up the road so it was something that I could try pretty quick. The clouds were still looking good, and I was hoping that the light would hold long enough for me to shoot the Pontiac if I decided that it was worth it. It was only a couple of miles up the road before I got to the shop where the car was sitting. It was just as I had remembered seeing it a couple of days before, only the lighting was much better. I pulled off on the shoulder where I had parked the last time. I got my camera out and loaded up the standard zoom because I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to need for this one since the last time I had done well with the wide-angle, but I didn’t have the brush to conceal the background now.
Just because it was newly available to me, I decided to start off with the driver’s side rear quarter view. I had to be careful about a newer Ford truck that was parked on the other side of the building, but it was far enough away that I was doubtful that it would cause any real problems. There was a compressor and air tank by the last bay door that made for a nice framing element which is where I decided to cut the building in the frame. The angle of the car put the long trunk stretching across most of the frame which was rather dramatic if I do say so myself.
The tree behind the building caused me some of the same issues that it had the last time I was here. I hated to just crop through it having it in the center of the frame, but there was no real way to compose the shot to include the full tree without losing the real reason behind the photo in the first place. I needed to keep this frame horizontal to emphasize the car in the frame as being important. Had I gone vertical, it would have made the building look odd, and the tree would have taken on a false since of importance to the image as a whole. I just played around with the framing until the scaling of the different elements came together and looked right.
As I was working on the different rear views of this car, another car pulled up behind me in the parking lot. I wasn’t surprised at all and had been waiting for this to happen each time I stopped here to photograph the scene. I went through the normal routine of identifying myself and explaining what I was doing here. She didn’t really have a problem with me being here, though I could tell that she was a little uncomfortable with the idea. She established some boundaries that she wanted me to respect which I had no problem doing. I confirmed several exact areas that I wanted to get into for photos and made sure that those were fine with her. Once she was happy with what I was doing, I gave her a card, and she rolled on down the road.
Now that I had permission to be here, I got in closer to the car and started to work one of my typical compositions dealing with a fender emblem and a turned wheel. I think I had tried this the last time I was here, but it hadn’t really turned out like I wanted it to. Now things were a bit clearer, and I wanted to focus on the 421 emblem more than anything. I found this engine designation to be ironic considering that US 421 is the main roadway that comes through this area and as Toni has pointed out many times over, most of my treks have been along this highway since the very beginning.
For whatever reason, I had no problem getting the composition put together this time, though I was surprised that it looked better from an elevated position. Usually this is done from lower to the ground, but I didn’t like how things were positioned in the frame from down low. I was thinking that this was going to be a black and white photo when it was all said and done, but when I started to process it, I loved the pop of red in the emblem that drove the attention right where I wanted it to be. It was a simple decision to leave it as a color photo after I realized that aspect of it.
Even though I had permission to get in as close to the car as I needed, I was still partial to the views of the car from a distance. I remembered capturing a shot of the rear passenger quarter the last time and had included the engine block to the side. The weeds were grown up so much that the block was barely visible then, but it was out in the wide open now. I liked the idea of this composition and knew that the sky was going to look great in this direction as well. I started to work with the position of the camera to get the frame just right while avoiding the Van that was parked just to the left of the Pontiac. In fact, the side of the van is just out of frame to the left in this photo. Because of that, I had to crop through the rear of the car which wasn’t too much of a problem since the trunk was so large. That choice effectively put the emphasis on the side of the car rather than the rear which was a good thing.
As I was getting the composition figured out, another truck pulled up behind me. I turned and went through the same introduction that I had before. I never get bothered by these “interruptions” because I’m always happy to speak with the property owners. I get to learn a little about what I am capturing and I will usually get the permission that I would much rather have than not. This time, I was given a bit more leniency as to where I could go, but I was happy with where I had been up to this point and really didn’t need to stray much further into the property than I already had. I had a very nice conversation with Destiny who has some interest in photography as well. Who knows, there might be a mentorship arrangement in our future.
When we were done with our conversation, I went back to setting up the composition that I had been starting on. Not much had changed and the sky was still looking great which I was thankful for. I just had to figure out how I wanted to define the edges of the frame before I started to get photos. When I thought that I had it all figured out, I fired off the camera and when I started to look at the image review, I didn’t like how the rear of the car looked. I needed to have the back windshield in the frame, but that was going to show off the van which I didn’t want. I ended up moving to the left slightly to give a bit more space between the car and the van and then raised the camera by about six inches. That worked and I liked the way that the car looked much better with this angle.
I was still wanting to do something abstract with this car, but there wasn’t much to work with. The patina was pretty uniform over the car and most of the chrome bits that would be visual anchors were missing from the car along the front. The more I looked, the more I figured that there just weren’t any good isolations with this car. That was until I spotted the way the light was hitting the driver’s side quarter panel. The sun was creating a nice sharp line where the bodyline was along the top of the quarter. The pillar was a different shade than the quarter and trunk and was separated by a bit of chrome trim. It was a simple view that focused on shapes more than anything else. I framed things up in the camera and shot a single exposure which I examined in the LCD. The curve was too stretched through the frame, so by lowering the camera about four inches, I was able to fix that issue and this was the last shot of the day which turned out quite nice considering how long I looked for an image like this on the car.
By this point, I had shot a total of 92 frames which was a lot more than I had thought considering the fact that until this last location I had been fighting with the light and having some difficult times with that. It was one of those days when I ended up shooting a little bit of everything kind of like ordering the sampler platter. I had done landscapes, specifically waterfalls to start with, then I did some barn photography, and ended up with an old rusty car in front of my camera. It is very nice to be able to switch between these genres of photography so easily and that only comes after years of practice with all of them. Maybe one day soon, I’ll get to the point where I can do the same with different kinds of portrait shoots. I’m sure that I will get there, it will just be a matter of practicing those genres of photography.
I hope that you have enjoyed this trek and the photos. I should be getting back to doing these regularly again since I am running out of scheduled portrait shoots now. If things go to plan, I should have more of them lined up going forward, but probably not the one a week like I’ve experienced through October. That is about the limit of what I can deal with since it takes so long to get everything prepared for a shoot and then the processing that happens after. I’ll never be a volume portrait photographer and ideally will take on two to four clients a month at the most. We shall see if that happens as I have been really putting forth the effort on that front here recently. I’ll talk more about it soon, so keep your eyes out for that year-end review coming on New Year’s Day.
Until then….
