Friday, September 26, 2025
Remember that hurricane that hit last year at the end of Summer. The name Helene should ring a bell, especially if you are around the Appalachian Mountains between North Carolina and Tennesse. Why this is important right now, is that this historical storm pretty much dictated the trek that I was about to embark on. A friend and client of mine, Bill Neagle, had made it possible for me to join him for a very special visit to Eastatoe Falls in Rosman, NC. This is a waterfall on private property which at one time was accessible to the public, but sometime around 2017 or so, the new owners decided against allowing the public to view it. Thanks to the efforts of the Waterfall Keepers of NC, created with the help of Kevin Adams, the new property owners had made this beautiful waterfall accessible to members of the Waterfall Keepers twice a year. Bill usually goes in the Fall and wanted me to join him, so he signed me up for a membership and scheduled out time during the end of September in 2024. Of course, the hurricane pretty much shut everything down in the mountains and most roads were inaccessible which meant that the Eastatoe visit was cancelled without any idea of when it would be back on the calendar again.
It goes without question that I took this in stride considering the devastation that the mountains saw during that storm. Going to get some photos seemed to be a silly thing to worry about in light of that, so I pretty much put it out of my mind. That was easy enough since I had never been there before, and the one time that I had stumbled on the location by accident was right after it was closed off to the public. Back then, I figured that I would never have the opportunity to see it, and I moved onto different things.
Well, with Bill’s gracious invitation and gift membership, I saw how simple it was to get to go see the waterfall, so when memberships came up for renewal this year, I went ahead and signed up for another year. I waited for the notification that the signup for Eastatoe Falls was active so that I could get signed up for the Fall trip. Again, Bill beat me to it. Before I could even check my email on the date that the notification came out, he had sent me a message saying that he had already signed us both up and we were on the list once again. He’s really nice that way and just like that I had the waterfall to look forward to again.
The issue was, this is turning out to be about the busiest that I have been in a long time with photography. I’ve got quite a few portrait sessions on the books along with consultations that go along with them. There are also my regular treks which tend to center around finding the color in the leaves during this time of the year. Regular chores around the house keep me busy just like in the Spring as well. I was actually kind of worried that I wasn’t going to get to go this year due to scheduling conflicts.
There was another worry that popped up shortly after getting the notification that we were signed up. What had been a very wet Summer with storms and rain nearly every day had been replaced with a drought. We went for about a month with no significant rainfall which is never a good thing leading up to a waterfall photo session. With my schedule and the lack of water, I was pretty sure that I wasn’t going to be able to go, but I did keep it on my calendar and tried to keep things from falling on that date just in case.
As the date approached, I realized that I honestly wasn’t really feeling much like doing waterfall photography, or landscape work in general. I had been putting so much mental energy into setting up my studio for one shoot and planning two other location sessions that I was running out of mental bandwidth to really think about landscape photography or allow myself to listen to the landscape. There was also a bit of imposter syndrome that was starting to rear its ugly head. Since I had been in a frame of mind focusing on portraits which I still think that I have a lot to learn about, that was spilling over into my landscape work, and I started to think that I wasn’t really good enough to photograph something as frequently photographed as Eastatoe Falls. I don’t like going places that are famous because I feel like there is no reason to just reshoot what everyone else has done in the past. There is a time and a place for that, but I wasn’t feeling right about it at all. If I wasn’t able to put my spin on it, I didn’t really see a reason to go all the way out there.
It was Toni that kind of put me back in the right frame of mind. She gave me some encouragement about the prospect of shooting this waterfall which is now only accessible for a very short window of time. It would also give me a reason to be in an area that I don’t really get to visit that often. She even put the bug in my ear about staying Friday night so I could get a later start on Saturday morning since out slot started at 8am and would go for two hours. It wasn’t much time considering that the drive out there was about three hours, one way. What she was saying made a lot of sense, and because this was a photography trip, I could actually expense it to the business funds which I had plenty to be able to manage this trip.
On Thursday, she booked the hotel for me, so that I would get the discount that her account would provide. I let Bill know that I had a hotel secured and offered him to join me since he had taken the initiative to get us signed up so quickly. He eventually agreed to come up Friday evening so that we could simplify the morning to get to the falls. It was all set up, yet I was still not really jumping up and down at the chance. What had been drought-like conditions was now starting to look like a washout. There was a lot of rain in the forecast starting Tuesday evening and rolling through the weekend. The rain leading up to Saturday morning was going to be really great, but I wasn’t really looking forward to shooting a waterfall in the driving rain, though that is preferred over a sunny day…but not by much.
When Friday rolled around, I was kind of looking forward to seeing Eastatoe Falls finally. The weather was looking good with a break in the rain during the morning hours when we would be there, but there was still a chance of some drizzle. Friday afternoon and evening was looking like a washout, so there wasn’t going to be much photography taking place on the way out there, which kind of bummed me out because I had been hoping to make a few stops on the way to make the journey worth it. I mean, all this way for one waterfall where I would probably get five photos or so. I wasn’t looking at any photos of the falls, and hadn’t for some time, so that I wouldn’t be influenced by other’s compositions. I was loosely familiar with how it looked and could kind of figure what kind of photos I would be looking to get. If I was lucky, I would come home with five or six good ones. That was an awful long way to drive for that few photos, so I was hoping to find some other things along the way.
Before I left, I needed to recaulk the shower and vanity in the master bath which took a bit of time but was something that I have been needing to do. Once that was finished, I grabbed a change of clothes and my toiletry bag to get ready to roll. I had been debating on whether or not to bring the wet weather accessories for the camera which would make shooting in the rain easier with the ability to use hoods on the lenses with a smaller polarizer that would fit inside of the hoods. I decided to bring that as well, just in case because once I was out there, I was going to be committed to photographing something at the waterfall.
I ended up leaving a little before 2pm after sitting in the chair and resting after the work in the bathroom. With nothing left to do at home, there was no reason to just sit there when I could be out looking for photos to capture. Before I made it to the end of the street that we live on, I received a text from another friend that I have spoken about in this blog many times over. Bob wanted to chat with me when I had a chance, so when I was sure that I had a good enough cell connection, I called him. I’m not going to go through the entire conversation, and it really doesn’t have much bearing on the trek I was starting out on, but it did kind of change my mindset a bit which is part of why I am mentioning it. To make a long story short, Bob had gotten some bad news from his doctor and let me know that he had been diagnosed with colon cancer. The prognosis is good because it was caught early, but he just wanted to share that with me and ask if I would mind getting the word out about his GoFundMe account that he was starting to help with the incoming medical bills. He has been gearing up to retire from being self-employed, but this is causing him to retire a bit earlier and insurance will only cover so much. Of course, I agreed to help get the word out, and even made a donation. You won’t see it on the GoFundMe page because I chose to bypass the “tip” that they insist on and sent him some money directly. Bob really is a great guy and is so giving to everyone. He has supported my photography over the years by attending more workshops than I can count as well as hiring me for mentorships. He has even taught our youngest, Sierra, his craft for free. I would ask that you visit his page and if you are moved to help out, he would greatly appreciate it.
When I was off the phone with him, there seemed to be a cloud over the day for me. It wasn’t that I was sad, or focusing on mortality in humans as much as it was the fact that waterfalls are kind of Bob’s gig and any time I photograph waterfalls, or see photos of them, he is somebody that I think about. Bill is another because waterfalls are his main focus in photography. It just seemed kind of ironic to get this kind of news while going to shoot a waterfall, which is actually kind of close to where he lives. I just couldn’t shake the thought, and I found it really hard to concentrate on looking for photos. I continued on with hopes that something would jump out at me. Nothing did before I got onto I-40 and started to head West.
By the time I exited off of the highways and started to get into Transylvania County, it was starting to rain and that kind of took that last bit of want for photography and pushed it into a corner. I drove around for a bit trying to get a feeling for the area that I was in and figure out where the potential might be. Everything felt disjointed to me, and I wasn’t seeing much of anything that struck a chord with my creative side. Did I forget to pack the creative side? I did pack very light but swore that I stuck it in there somewhere.
I drove around until about 5pm or so and decided that I had had enough driving. I was ready to eat dinner and get checked into the hotel. I got everything into the room and confirmed that there was a Subway in the shopping center beside the hotel which is where I wanted to go. The rain was a light drizzle at the moment, and the walk wasn’t too far at all, so I just went on and took a leisurely stroll over to the restaurant. I sat there at a table and ate my sandwich before walking back to the hotel. The rain had stopped, and the light was looking good, in a moody kind of way. Bill had said that he was looking at arriving around 8:45 which gave me a few hours to work with. I decided to go back up to the room and get my camera and go out scouting some more now that I had food in my belly.
The problem with unfamiliar areas is I never know where to go look. I knew that I needed something that was quick to shoot because the light was dropping fast and there was no time to hike for a landscape scene. I was going to have to look for something in the decay arena which worked out well because I am a bit more fluid with that subject currently since that is what I have been shooting most of the Summer. If only I could find something good to shoot.
There was an absence of old cars everywhere I was looking, and things were kind of packed in tight which made the rural scenes harder to compose around. I was also having to spend a lot of time looking at the road and the signs to know where I was at and keep an idea of which direction I was going. It wasn’t an easy scouting trip, and the limited time made it that much more difficult. I did start to find some potential eventually, but nothing that was ready to be photographed. Not too far from the hotel, I had spotted what looked like an old graveyard which I do find quite beautiful in this kind of dreary weather. I’ve just always had a little hangup with photographing them because it feels like I’m disturbing things. The fact that this subject fit my mindset, attitude, and the weather was just too much to ignore.
I pulled into the little parking area and found a little church off to the side of the cemetery, and now that I could look closer, the headstones were quite old, and the landscaping was not as manicured as I normally find. Essentially, this was just what I do like to photograph when it comes to cemeteries. It all fit with the mood and atmosphere. It was what the landscape was telling me to photograph. I didn’t have a clear idea of what I wanted to accomplish here, but it was seeming like the story was writing itself. I just had to see how to capture it.
Not knowing what I was going to be facing, I decided to put my 24-70mm lens on the camera for a bit of flexibility. I left the polarizer off because I wanted to have a bit of the sheen from the rain to add some contrast to the scene in the dimming light. It is an old woodland trick that I have learned over the years that I thought would work well in this situation. From this point, I just started to walk around to see what spoke to me.
The first scene that grabbed my attention was a slightly elevated portion that had a beautiful rock wall around several plots. It was out in the open which allowed more light to hit it with the trees in the background creating a nice vignette of sorts. I looked around to find the right angle to capture this from and decided that the one long headstone on the ground made for a great visual anchor. The name on it was Fortune, which added another element to the story that I kind of liked. With the lighting and the subject, I set the camera up for black and white because that was how I was feeling about the scene at the time and thought that was most certainly going to be how it would be captured.
Organizing the scene took a good deal of time because cemeteries are usually quite full of lots of different kinds of elements. My job was to compose an image that would make for a very concise visual of what I loved about the scene. It is this clarity of thought that will be the topic of my next Behind the Camera being published in a few days, so keep an eye out for that. The setting kind of dictated how things fell into place with the rocky wall providing a framework for the headstone and background. By going kind of wide with the lens, I was able to get a dramatic perspective on the scene while capturing the dreary mood of the background as well as more hints about the location. It really seemed to work well in the camera, so I fired off a few variations of this composition with different focus points since I wanted the image to be kind of soft except for the headstone, but the foreground needed to be relatively in focus as well.
When I got the images home, I didn’t like this one in black and white as expected, so I ended up doing a different processing and did it in color. The greens helped to calm the image down which was a problem with the black and white. That ended up having too much contrast because of the tone of the grass keeping too much of the image bright. The colors helped me to tone down the tonality of the scene much better while retaining structural contrasts to define the shapes and pathways through the image.
This composition also led to another one that was a bit more focused on the headstone. I shot this one because there was a real chance that the broader scene was going to be too visually complicated to effectively convey what I had seen in the scene. By getting in closer, I was able to really focus my attention on the textures of the stone against the grasses. This was another one that I shot in black and white at the time, but when it came time to process it, I could tell right off that color was the way to go. When I saw the finished photo of this more intimate capture, that was when I realized that the opening image would be better in color as well.
The last three images of the evening were to capture the church off to the side. There were three really interesting headstones that were in front that drew my attention. The sky overhead was also looking really nice at this point. The church was kind of included in the frame to give contrast and separation to the headstones as well as pointing the eyes up to the sky. The tree behind the church provided the contrast to really highlight the triangles that were pointing up. It was a simple composition and one that I wish was a bit stronger. However, it did accomplish what I set out to do. It was also the one image from this location that I kept in black and white. Color had nothing to do with this, and I needed that tonal contrast that was just not working in the other photos. I wasn’t sure if I would keep this image or not, but it has grown on me since last night when I was processing the images.
That was the end of the ten frames that I shot while at the cemetery. I didn’t stick around any longer because I wasn’t seeing anything else that looked like a composition for me. There was a repair shop that was close by that looked to have some potential subjects that I wanted to go and check out. There was nothing there, and the last 30 minutes of daylight were spent driving around looking for anything else to shoot. I found nothing except for a really great sunset in the stormy clouds; but I wasn’t able to find anything compelling to put underneath of the sky in the time that I had to scout.
With that, we are at the end of the first day. I got back to the room and hopped in the shower so that I didn’t keep Bill from getting settled when he arrived. I read for a bit before he showed up and hoped that the landscape photography book that I had selected would help me get in the mood for tomorrow. The trek was starting out kind of slow, and I wasn’t sure how things were going to go from here. I knew that I had something in the can at least and what I had captured wasn’t my normal subject which made it kind of unique and interesting to me. The jury was still out on whether or not the photos were going to work when I got them home, but I had started capturing images.
The weather for Saturday morning was looking pretty good. The rain was going to continue through the evening and stop early in the morning. Our window from 8-10am was looking generally clear of rain except for about a 30% chance during the middle of the slot. I could live with that. I just hoped that I would be able to capture something meaningful during out time there. If we were really lucky, there would be fog which I was seeing as a chance on one of my apps.
By this point, you are probably wondering about the photos from Eastatoe Falls. You have undoubtedly scrolled down the bottom of this blog entry and looked for the photos which you haven’t seen. That probably prompted you to look at the title of this blog to see if there was a “part 1” attached. That isn’t there either. Now you are wondering if we got rained out, or if I didn’t feel like getting any photos. Maybe all my photos turned out terrible, and I have nothing to share. I might have dropped my camera in the water and ruined it. There really is no telling what happened at this point, so I’m going to leave you with a cliffhanger. I will have more of the story coming soon, but I don’t quite know how I’m going to deal with it just yet. I did want to get this part out of the way and set the tone for how the trek started.
Stay tuned to find out what happened to our brave photographers when the alarm rang on Saturday morning at 5:45.
Until then….
