Saturday, April 29, 2023
So, what do you do after waking up at 6am, seeing Toni off on a trip to Georgia, and then spending the next eight hours detailing her car? You grab your camera and head to the mountains, of course. To be perfectly honest here, this trek wasn’t planned or even considered until early afternoon. The original plan was to spend the entire day working on Toni’s car for a full Spring Detail. The weather was coolish with clouds forecasted for the entire day. At around 11am though, the clouds seemed to clear off and leave mostly clear skies. That wasn’t terrible since by that point, I was back in the garage and getting the paint prepped for polish and a good sealing. As the afternoon started to wear on though, I noticed that the clouds were starting to come back, and they were looking quite interesting. I had a brief thought of trying to make a sunset shoot later on which would mean stepping up the pace I was working at.
I checked the weather and sure enough, the clouds were supposed to be building back up through the evening with high level and mid-level clouds dominating. I made a quick check on the sunset forecast website which is kind of reliable. It was showing a decent chance for some color in the sky and looking at the sky overhead, I could see that possibility as well. I continued with the car and considered my options for a destination. One place that I have been wanting to return to has been Beacon Heights on the Blue Ridge Parkway overlooking the Linville Gorge. There are a couple of really good compositions there and I was hoping to get it while the Spring color was still popping off on the nearest peak.
That destination was about an hour away, and I was going to need a little time to hike the trail and determine where I wanted to set up. With sunset at a tad after 8pm, I was wanting to be in place by 7-7:15. That was meaning that I was going to have to be on the way no later than six. That decision was made about 2 o’clock, which didn’t give me much time. I still had to apply the sealant and get it all buffed out before conditioning the leather and cleaning the interior. Fortunately, all the prep work that I had done made the sealant a very quick process and the interior wasn’t really dirty at all. Somehow, I managed to get done with the car just before five which gave me time to grab a quick bite before heading down the road at 5:30.
The clouds were building up, but there was a definite altitude to them which promised some good color to show up as the sun got low. This was going to work out pretty well, or so I thought. When I got to Beacon Heights, the parking lot was only about half full which was much better than I was anticipating. As I was getting my camera out, several folks were getting into their cars and leaving which made it even better. As I was hiking up the trial, I had to stop for at least a dozen folks coming down from the overlook. They were telling me how pretty the low clouds were and how if I hurried, I would be able to capture it. While I was interested to see how the scene was looking, I could tell that the light was very flat and not quite what I had in mind. My hope was that things were going to come to life in about an hour, but I did hurry up the trail to see what I could make of the scene.
My first stop was at the section that I have been beaten by several times now that overlooks Rough Ridge. I have just never been able to get a composition that I really liked from that location. With the interesting sky, I thought I might get lucky this time. It wasn’t too far out of the way, so I had no problem at all making the slight detour. When I got there, I wasn’t seeing anything that held interest for me, but I walked around on the bald to see what the different views looked like. I think I stayed there about five minutes and decided to go to the main overlook which was where I had imagined I would end up. That took about five minutes or so to get to, so I really wasn’t out anything by making the quick stop at the side overlook.
When I stepped out onto the bald, I knew the areas where the photos were, and I was pleased to see that there was not a single person here. I found the spot where I could set up a panorama and considered the scene. The clouds were very low and were actually clipping the top of the mountain. It was not ideal, but I could still make out Hawksbill and Table Rock in the distance which worked in the scene. The clouds were really great above the mountain and helped to frame the distant ridges as well. The light was uninspiring, but there was a distinct promise of better light as the sun got below the clouds. I just had to wait for it.
While waiting, I figured I would go ahead and give the pano a try to see how the clouds were affecting it. I built the camera with the telephoto lens and got all the leveling done to the tripod before making a dry run through the scene. I got the exposure set and the focus set. I then started to make exposures and counted off eleven frames from left to right. I wheeled through the images on the camera to see how it was all looking. It looked fair, but not amazing. Since nothing was really changing in the scene, I turned the camera off to see what was going to happen. I was looking around for isolations that I could shoot with the moody atmosphere because I was thinking it was going to be a while before the light started to work for this scene.
I fitted the teleconverter to the lens and started to get some intimate compositions of the gorge in the distance as well as some of the closer mountains. These weren’t really appealing to be either because the light was just too flat to really show them off. I think I shot four compositions from this perspective and didn’t like any of them. I turned the camera off again and started to walk around to see how the angles affected things. I was also looking for some different foreground interests and hopefully a way to make the scene pop despite the lack of clouds.
The only thing that I could find was well off to the left. There was a grove of pine trees right at the edge of the outcropping that I was standing on. The angle to the main peak was much different than what I had been looking at and I thought that using a wide-angle lens might do the trick here. I went back up to where the camera was and considered my options. I had everything set up for a pano here and all I had to do was remove the extender to be ready when the light hit. If I were to move it now, I would have to go through the full setup again. I was faced with that struggle that is all too engrained in my mind. Do I commit to a composition that isn’t well lit, or do I move to something else that might not be as strong, but works in the current moment?
Something that I often have a hard time with is going for what is available right then. I’ll usually skip it and focus on something that still has to develop a bit more. This time, I decided to move the camera. I figured that as many times as I have shot this particular panorama, I could get it set back up quickly if needed. I moved all my gear over to that left edge and swapped out my lens for the wide angle one. I didn’t add any filters because there really wasn’t much need for any. The sun was so tucked into the clouds that a polarizer would have made a negligible difference, and the exposure was so even across the scene that there was no need for any grads.
I worked through this composition for a while. I was between 16-20mm and adjusted the camera position several times before landing on the right placement and elevation. Once I had things dialed in, started to watch the light and the clouds. This was going to be the element that would make one of the images better than the others. The clouds were moving creating subtle differences in the scene, but the most important part was the fact that the sunlight was starting to hit the rolling hills which filled up a good portion of the scene. That fact gave me a lot of hope for a good sunset in about 30 more minutes, but for now it was working with the composition that I had set up.
Because the clouds were so gray and kind of low on detail, I was able to include a good portion of the rocky outcropping I was standing on. It was a similar hue to the sky, and there wasn’t much detail in it, but I did like the texture that it brought into the scene. The trees formed a nice visual anchor for the scene that was balanced out by the primary mountain in the distance. The part of the scene that made it all worthwhile was the Spring vegetation which was getting some gentle sunlight through the clouds. The contrast with the dark evergreens brought even more attention to the colors of the season. I looked at this as a black and white early on, but decided it was that bank of color that told the story that I wanted to tell here. Had I gone black and white with this one, the photo would have been all about the textures of the scene which were not nearly as important. The trick was going to be getting that right amount of color in the final image to really sell the story I was wanting to tell.
While I was in the process of getting the different exposures from this point of view, I was joined by some ASU students who were doing a senior portrait session. They stayed up on the top of the hill and did their thing. At least somebody was getting photos that they were excited about. It was not the weather that I would go for in a portrait session, but both of them seemed happy with them. Meanwhile I had turned the camera off as the clouds were getting lower and there was an actual mist that was blowing through where I was standing. Sunset was getting closer, and I just wasn’t seeing any chance for any color. Everything that was blowing past me was heading towards the West and I was pretty sure that it would snuff out any light from the sun.
I weighed my options and determined that it made more sense to go looking for some woodland images where I could take advantage of the fog that was now rolling in. I noticed that the two girls that were doing their shoot were wrapping up and starting to make moves to leave. Not wanting to look like I was following on their heels, I waited for a bit to give them time to get down the trail. I was also hoping that the sky would do that NC High Country thing and change drastically. That didn’t happen, and I officially gave up on this location.
I made the hike back down the trail and noticed that there was no fog in the woods, and really nothing of visual interest along the trail. I ended up back at the truck about 15 minutes before sunset. The sky was dark and overcast. I could see no color at all in any direction. I just set my course towards home and hoped that I would find something along the way. I found nothing and ended up getting home a good deal earlier than expected.
I was well past needing a shower (remember that eight-hour detailing job) and made that a first priority. By the time I was done with that, it was almost 10pm. This is kind of early for me to turn in, but I was worn slap out and didn’t really feel like going through the photos just yet. I was not all that happy with them from what I was expecting and figured that fresh eyes in the morning would help make better choices. I think I was asleep before the clock chimed ten.
I was up early the next morning and after breakfast, I was downstairs going through the 30 frames that I had shot. The first thing that I did was build the one panorama that I had shot that represented eleven of the frames. It wasn’t terrible, but it certainly wasn’t what I had in mind when I decided to go out there. I gave a star rating to some of the isolations that I shot and two of that last composition I had framed up. I kept working the images down until I had two which I felt were worth working on.
Ironically, the test shoot of a pano was one that I wanted to work on further as was one of the last compositions that I shot before the clouds got too low. The process of building an eleven image panorama took a bit of time and yielded a 1.56GB file. I worked both of the images for about an hour and a half or so until I was relatively satisfied with them. I sent screenshots to Toni in Georgia, and she liked them both. I made a few more subtle changes on them and considered them done.
It wasn’t a great day for photography, but I am looking at it as a bonus for the end of the month since I had no intention of going out for any photos that day. I am glad that I went because I had a good time in the mountains after a day of “wax on, wax off.” When you really consider the images shot, I am still in that 10% arena since taking the pano into consideration, I only shot 20 photos during the evening.
I hope that you enjoyed the short trek as well as the photos. As with all of my blog entries, if you see a photo here that speaks to you, please let me know. I would love to match you up with a print of your very own. You can order online here for the basic size offerings, or you can contact me directly to discuss larger prints, or specialty media like canvas or metal. You are also invited to check out three of my framed prints which are on display for the next month at the Ashe County Arts Council. Remember, there is just no better way to enjoy photography than in the printed form.
I’ll be back tomorrow morning with a brand new Behind the Camera, so be sure to watch for that. This month, I’ll be looking at how I keep photography fresh. There will be suggestions as well as what I routinely do to keep things inspired.
Until then….
