Monday, April 21, 2025
You may remember when I was planning my last trek that it was originally going to take me out to the Linville Gorge for a sunrise session. Well, that didn’t really pan out because I ended up with a more local trek with a guaranteed subject. Sunrises are always a shot in the dark, almost literally because you start the shoot out in the dark without any real concept of what the sky looks like. I want to like sunrises more than I do because when they turn out right, they are lovely, but there are more duds than wins when it comes to sunrises, and for that matter sunsets as well. There can be all the planning in the world, but if there is one cloud over the sun, or if the clouds aren’t positioned right in the sky, the light just won’t work out for you. Yet, I still get up early in the morning and chase sunrises occasionally, even though it seems that I tend to gravitate to the really early sunrises of the year rather than the middle of the winter when the sun comes up around lunch time.
As it turns out, I have had this vision of a panoramic composition at the Linville Gorge as seen from Wiseman’s View for a couple of weeks now. It doesn’t seem to be going anywhere and that means that I am going to be mentally stuck there if I don’t give it a try. That is just how it goes with me when I start to get an idea. Before I can move onto something else, I have to go out and attempt the idea and see how it goes. Once I do that, I can usually clear my head and focus on other things. I just needed the promise of a good morning before I made the hour and a half drive out there.
Over the weekend, I was looking at the week ahead since I was needing to get some of the vehicles cleaned up and at least get rid of the top coat of pollen. However, looking at the days ahead, there was a week’s worth of rain forecasted, starting with Monday evening. That kind of killed the motivation for washing any cars with the exception of the Miata that wouldn’t drive in the rain anyway. It also wasn’t that dirty which meant that I really had no cars to wash, and there was a pretty good promise of clouds through the week. That meant that I was probably going to be able to get out with the camera at least one of those days for some photography.
As I looked at the clouds for Monday, which was now devoid of rain completely, I saw between 75-100% cloud cover in the mountains right around sunrise. These clouds were all supposed to be high level clouds which I knew from experience would make for a promising sunrise as long as there was a hole in the clouds at the horizon for the sun to shine through. The entire day was supposed to be pretty cloudy as a matter of fact which meant that I would likely be able to capture some other photos on the way back. This would leave plenty of time to get the photos edited and the blog done so that I could rest for a bit after what was going to be a very early morning.
Toni and I turned in early as she always gets up early for work, and I was going to beat her….oh, that sounded bad. I was going to get up earlier than her at 3:45, so I could be on my way at 4:30. When the alarm rang, I was kind of surprised because it felt like I had just gotten to bed. I reluctantly checked the weather and saw that the cloud forecast was showing nearly complete cloud coverage in the upper levels which was very promising. The weather app was saying 75% clouds around sunrise, but it didn’t say what levels the clouds would be. With both of the apps in agreement, I checked the sunrise forecast through a different website. It didn’t really agree and put the colors further to the East with the area of Linville Gorge pretty much out of the possibility of a colorful sunrise. With two sources saying I would be in luck and only one casting doubt, I figured that I would go ahead and give it a try. It was only a few hours of driving, and I would be home around the time I would normally be getting up.
Since I was planning on being home pretty early in the day, I decided to forego breakfast since I wasn’t really hungry just yet and I would put off my normal morning routine so I could be on the road a bit earlier just to make sure I got there in time. I wasn’t sure of the condition of Old 105 after the hurricane, but I knew that right before that the Forest Service had graded the road to repair the major ruts that I had experienced the last time. The road condition would dictate how fast the last four miles of the ride would be and I wasn’t sure that they would be fast miles.
I left in plenty of time and started my way West watching the clear moon the entire way up the mountain. There was very little in the way of clouds that I could see even though the cloud app was showing clouds already in the area. The weather forecast had them coming in right at sunrise, so I was starting to see which one was going to be more accurate for the day. I was really looking forward to getting out there and doing a little landscape photography since I haven’t done any this year. The only landscape work that I have done has been the last trip to the coast that Toni and I made back in January. Beyond that, I have done just about everything else but landscape photography.
When I got to Old 105, I was met with a Subaru exiting onto Hwy 183. I’m not used to seeing traffic on this road so early in the morning as it was still before 6am. I was really hoping that it wasn’t going to be crowded, but whatever it was, I was going to have to be ok with it. I started the climb up the forest road and was kind of hoping that there were some washed out portions like we had seen the last time I had driven it when Toni and I did a branding shoot for another photographer back in the Summer. Now that I’ve got the new truck pretty well squared away, I was looking forward to trying it out on some obstacles which many of those ruts had counted as back then.
For the most part, the road was in pretty good condition and the worst parts were up the steep climbs where you could see where vehicles had experienced wheel hop getting traction. This made for a bit of a rough ride, but nothing that was difficult or technical at all. It was fun doing it in the dark though, especially over a couple of hills where there was no view in front of the truck because the hood blocked everything, and even if it didn’t the road was well below the headlights’ aim. The truck handled the road very well and the suspension soaked up the bumps and uneven bits like they were nothing. I was almost sad when I pulled into the parking area for Wiseman’s View as I was really getting into the groove of driving the road, but that wasn’t why I was there.
I got out and grabbed my gear from the back before making the quick hike to the overlook. There were no other cars in the parking lot, and I heard no evidence of other people around which made me happy. After just a few minutes I was at the twin overlooks, and I went down to the lower overlook to scout out the spot that I wanted to make the panoramic photo from. It wasn’t quite what I had imagined, but I was pretty sure that I could make it work as long as the sky looked good.
Before committing to that spot, I went to the other overlook and checked out the view from there. It was pretty much like it always was for sunrise and I decided that I didn’t need to revisit that spot as I have several really good sunrise shots from that spot. I was here to get a more complex view of the gorge with a softer sky overhead. That was going to be from the other overlook, so I moved back over to that point and started to pick out the exact spot for the tripod.
This took a little doing as I was trying to get a sweeping view of the gorge along with the mountains on either side without including the trees that were pretty close to the edges of what I wanted to capture. When I was pretty sure I had the right spot, I set the tripod up, making sure that it was level for the panorama. I then mounted the camera with the standard zoom as I wanted to get the railing and overlook in the shot for a strong foreground and sense of scale for the image. I did a dry run through the sweep to see if it would work. I wasn’t sure about the railing, but the composition was pretty strong from what it was looking like. The only problem that I had was that there weren’t many clouds in the sky and the ones that were there, were right on the horizon where the sun was going to be coming up. With about 30 minutes until sunrise, I was thinking that this was going to be a bust because of the lack of clouds, and how that one cloud was going to block the sun anyway.
I didn’t give up though, I stuck with it and came up with a smaller composition that would take advantage of the little bit of clouds above the gorge as well as the overlook. I had to move the tripod in a bit closer, but for now the pano was going to have to wait. It might not get shot today at all because I was going to need to make that happen before the sun crested the horizon so that the sky would be correctly exposed for the composition I was planning.
Once I moved the camera a bit, I flipped it to a horizontal orientation and framed up the shot that I wanted. I left the 24-70mm lens on because it captured what I wanted out of the scene. There was no need for any filters at this point, so I left the lens bare for now. I did start making exposures to check and see how the light was looking on the scene. As I was getting the exposure and focus all dialed in, I could hear some hikers coming towards me. Fortunately, there were two different overlooks here and I was hoping that they weren’t going to want to occupy the one that I had selected for the photo.
We greeted each other as they got close. They had come from Hickory and had the same idea as I had to watch the sunrise over the gorge. They asked if they could slip by me to go down to the overlook which I said they could. The light wasn’t really good yet, so I was happy to wait. I did ask if they were going to stay down there once they got there, or if it was going to be a quick visit. They said that they would stay down there and not get in my way. It was then that I told them that the overlook was a key part to the shot and they agreed to go to the other one. I’m glad that we had covered all of that before they got down there. I would have hated to have lost the composition, but I had no expectation of keeping this view to myself if somebody really wanted to stand there. My only claim to it was that I had gotten there first and was essentially standing on the platform myself.
As the sun came up, the clouds remained at the horizon, but there were small holes in them which the sunlight was shining through. There was a little bit of color over the mountain to the left, but I had captured so much better that I wasn’t even remotely interested in moving the camera to try and capture that bit of color. I really loved the composition that I had going here and felt that the right thing to do was to commit to it. When the sky started to brighten, I added a 2-stop soft ND Grad to control the exposure and allow me to get a little more detail in the shadows of the gorge which I felt was important to the shot. The light levels continued to rise, but the color was very faint with touches of pink and tobacco hitting some of the cloud edges.
I just kept making exposures as the light changed and I kept an eye on the clouds on the horizon to see when the sun might peek through the holes. The sky kept getting brighter, so I eventually swapped out that 2-stop grad for a 3-stop soft grad which worked to keep the overall contrast the same as it had been. I was pretty sure that the color wasn’t really going to hit and that left me with needing the warm light from the sun to hit the mountain that I was standing on for a bit of visual contrast and interest to the photo. I was thinking that hope was dashed when the sun passed the first hole and there was no light on the landscape at all. The sky was picking up more color, but it wasn’t anything all that special, so I really needed that light on my foreground.
The sun went behind more clouds and left the light flat over the landscape which got me thinking that the show was over. By the time it came out at the second hole, the warm quality of light would be gone, and it would be roughly daylight at that point. Before I broke everything down, I stopped and waited for a few more minutes remembering all the times that the best light had happened after I put the camera away. I really didn’t see it happening this morning which was a real shame after standing here for nearly an hour and shooting some 50 frames as the light changed.
When the sun finally did hit that second hole in the clouds, I could see my shadow to the left, so I knew that the overlook was getting the sunlight at this point. I adjusted my exposure and realized that there was color in the clouds to the left of the peak now. The original composition had put the peak kind of close to the edge and I needed more sky, but couldn’t pan to the left without making the overlook appear awkward. With the lens at 24mm I needed to go wider. Would I have the time? I had no choice. I quickly pulled off the filter and did a quick lens swap to the 16-35mm and put the filter right back on again. The swap took maybe 10 seconds and the camera never moved. I was now able to open the lens up to 21mm which gave me the right amount of sky and everything else was just the same as before. I grabbed the shot just as the color in the sky faded.
That was the 57th frame of the morning, and it just so happened to be the one that I deemed the best of them all in terms of sky color, and color on the landscape. In full disclosure though, the colors were very faint in the photo and had been quite faint in reality. The sunrise was technically a bust, but I knew that I had some tricks up my sleeve to make this image look like I had seen it in my heart. It was just a matter of pulling the colors out of the scene and working the sky and landscape differently during the post processing stage. It did take me a while to arrive at the correct look for everything, but the end result is something that I am rather happy about. It wasn’t the panorama that I had wanted to capture, but the sky wasn’t going to support that idea this morning. I’ll keep it in my head for another attempt in the future, so hopefully we will all see if my concept works.
Once I had captured that frame, the light was pretty much done, and the sky was clearing off quickly. I packed up my gear and made the quick hike back to the truck. Once I was all loaded up, I made my way back to Old 105, but decided to finish the full road which was about 10 miles, or so in distance beyond where I was currently. It turned into a little adventure as I really put the suspension through its paces and made sure that all the new stuff on the truck worked as it should and didn’t shake loos over the rough terrain. It added about an hour to my morning, but it was well worth it and I really enjoyed driving the overlanding route. I just wish it was more rutted like it had been years ago when I drove this section in the 4Runner. I had bottomed it out a couple of times and really wanted to test the ground clearance of the Frontier, but the ruts were all gone. When I got to the end of the road, I turned around and did it the other way before heading home finally.
When I got home, I grabbed my breakfast and got started culling and processing this one image from the day. The hit rate was lousy, but I am happy that I got a photo out of the day. It could have easily gone the other way, and I could have come home with nothing. I do hope that you enjoy this photo, and I appreciate you for tagging along as I talk about my morning. If you would like a print of this one to hang on your wall so you can enjoy the sunrise without the pollen in your nose, just let me know, or order directly from the gallery store. Print purchases go a long way in funding these treks, and it is a great way of showing your support of my art while giving yourself an original piece of artwork to go on your wall. It becomes a win for all of us!
If the weather forecast holds, I should be back out in the next day or two for some more photos, so stay tuned. If you haven’t already, be sure and subscribe to the blog so that you can get notifications when I create a new entry. These entries usually mean new photos and you want to be sure and see the new photos before they are posted on social media, don’t you? I mean, I’ve done the math, and with the photos that are in my que, ready to be posted on the socials, this one will probably be seen again in early 2026. Let’s see how accurate that assumption is. By subscribing, you will get a notification right away, with a direct link to the blog. It is really that simple.
Until next time…
