Thursday, October 1, 2020
Looking at the weather forecast for the following week or more was looking like a perfect time for a normal person with nothing but sun over the full extended forecast. There were no clouds to be had anywhere it would seem. This is the type of weather that most people view as “perfect” especially when you add the temperatures in the 60’s and 70’s. Yes, it is nice weather, I won’t argue with that. In fact, it is perfect weather to take the Miata out for some driving, but that was not what I was looking to do today. Nope, I was looking to do some photography, but this relentless sun was not doing me any favors. When I took a look into the hourly forecast I saw the potential for some clouds during the afternoon and into the evening that wasn’t showing on the extended forecast. I opened up my Clear Outside App and confirmed that there were going to be a mix of clouds that would start building around 2pm and should be getting pretty good about 3pm. It was still early in the morning and I had time to think about where I might want to go, but I was having a hard time getting a plan in place. I hate starting out late in day when it comes to my photography. I would much prefer getting an early start to the day and greeting first light. That way I am getting wrapped up before the crowds get out and start to get in the way.
I wasn’t going to have that luxury today. I had slept in well past that point and there had been no clouds at all for the morning hours. If I was going to go out, it was going to be towards the end of the day, but only if the clouds materialized as planned. Otherwise, I was going to go for an afternoon drive for pure enjoyment. Well, as luck would have it, the clouds did start rolling in around 2pm as planned. I had gone down to check the mail and could see the clouds forming just to the West. There weren’t many, but it was following the forecast so I was hopeful. I had been looking and determined from my app that the clouds would be localized over Wilkes County and would thin out in directions radiating away from here. That pretty much meant that rural subjects were going to be my primary focus and I was just going to have to go out and hut through the back roads in search of something new.
I loaded up the 4Runner and headed out in search of something…but I wasn’t quite sure what that something would be. My initial plan was to head down to the lake to see if there was anything out there that I could do some long exposure work with. It wasn’t too far off and while the clouds were building I could check that out. That would also put me out on Hwy 268 which I typically have decent luck on and knew that there was still a good bit of the area out there which I had not visited before. I was going to try very hard not to retrace steps of places that I had been before as that wouldn’t really serve my purpose today. I was looking for something new and I was only going to find that by searching in new places.
When I got to the lake, I took a few looks out at the water to see if there were any good compositions available to me. I didn’t see anything that would work for the long exposure photography that I was trying to work on. After a few minutes of looking I decided that there was nothing there for me and that I needed to continue down the road in search of something else. The clouds were still well to the West and North of my location so I was needing to go in that direction in search of my photographs.
I wish I knew where I was at, but I found myself just making a series of turns down roads that were unfamiliar to me. I know that I lost cell phone coverage for nearly two hours as I drove down the back roads of Wilkes County out near Buffalo Cove. There was a lot of really interesting things to see, but nothing was really jumping out as a composition though. That was a real shame because the lighting was actually quite good with some diffusing from the clouds which were rather pretty in their own right. I was really wanting to find something that would be able to take advantage of the exiting lighting.
It took some time, but I did eventually find something that caught my eye. It was a little cabin sitting beside of a stream. the sun was lighting the cabin and that stream was curved in the most perfect way with a little bit of rapids thrown in for good measure. There was even a place to pull off on the side of the road in about the location that I would want to set the camera up. I went ahead and pulled off and started to look critically at the scene. It was not quite as perfect as I had thought at first. The cabin was blocked by some trees and there was no way of getting an angle where they were not in front of the cabin. There was also a shelter to the side that had some tables and a grill which I didn’t really like, but there was really nothing that I could do about that either. The stream and the lighting were good enough to carry the image I thought so I went ahead and pulled the camera out and mounted my 24-70mm lens which should give me just the right focal lengths to get the depth that I was after. I also screwed on my Singh-Ray Color Combo Polarizer to pull the glare out of the water and to saturate the colors a bit more. This was all mounted to my tripod and I started to find the spot where I needed to be in order to organize the elements the way that I wanted.
I found the spot to set up about 50 feet back from the truck. I had a good view of the cabin, but still blocked by the trees. The stream was uninterrupted and had the right angles for the image I had in mind. I got the camera positioned and then elevated it to get the right balance in the frame before starting to make exposures. It was working, but not quite as well as I had hoped. The light was good on the cabin and stayed pretty steady which was good. That allowed me to fine tune the composition a few different times before I settled on this intimate crop that didn’t show the whole stream, but provided for a better visual weight on the cabin I thought.
Still wanting to get more of the curves of the stream, I decided to flip the camera into portrait orientation so that I could keep the cabin a bit larger in the frame while including more of the foreground. This seemed to do the trick rather nicely and I found a slightly better composition of the entire location. I was sure that This was going to be my keeper of the bunch so I did a few variations on this concept before packing the camera up. The funny thing was, when I got the images home I found that I liked the horizontal and vertical captures equally as well. They were both very effective compositions and had different ways of telling the story here. I struggled with which one should be kept, but in the end I decided that they were both strong enough to stand on their own as individual images. They would serve two entirely different purposes based on their orientation. I still didn’t like the shelter or the trees that blocked the cabin, but the overall feeling of the images translated very well despite the compositional issues that I has with the scene.
I had my first image in the bag at this point, so the following captures should come much easier if history proved to be any indicator. I got back in the truck with a newfound energy and started back on the road. The clouds were getting better and better as I moved to the West. The problem was I was seeing nothing that would go under the sky. I had some of the best lighting, but yet nothing to photograph. I had covered about 60 miles and had only found a single subject to shoot. The few locations that I was finding appealing were not in good light. The good light was in most places though, just not showcasing anything that I wanted to shoot. I was even thinking that this was better landscape lighting than it was for rural subjects. I wasn’t sure how far from the Blue Ridge Parkway I was since I had no connectivity with my phone or GPS (for searching points), but I knew that I had been going West for some time. I continued on that path hoping to get to the Parkway eventually.
Well, I didn’t find the Parkway, but I did find a road that I knew which was US 321. I knew where I was at this point and started North towards Blowing Rock. I would be able to pick up the Parkway there soon enough. The clouds were looking better and better and I was really excited about doing some landscape photography with those clouds. By the time that I got to the entrance to the Parkway I was ready to explode. The clouds were perfect, and the light was getting soft and warm as the sun was nearing the horizon. All I had to do was find a view to put under those clouds. That didn’t take long at all which was a nice turn of events after the afternoon that I had been experiencing.
Shortly after entering the Parkway I saw a lone tree in a field that I had seen for many years yet never photographed. The sun was to the right and there were some nice clouds beyond the tree. Everything was currently in the shadows as the sun had dipped behind the clouds, but I was certain that when the sun came back out that it would illuminate the tree perfectly. I pulled off the road quickly and got my camera out. I started out with my 24-70mm lens so that I could get a decent environmental shot of the scene. I added the polarizer so that I could pull a little added contrast out of the sky. It was only a matter of time before the sun would come back out and bathe the tree in light.
I could see that the clouds were moving quickly and the sun was about to pop back out based on the brightness of the clouds overhead. The ground started to light up and I was ready to capture the tree in the full warm light. But wait…the tree was still in the shadows. The sun was out, but the tree was still mostly dark. NUTS! the ridge to my right was blocking the sun and putting the tree into the shadows. I finally had a great subject to shoot, but the light was not right for the composition that I had. The majority of the foreground including the fence was in the shadows with the tree basically a silhouette against the sky. This wasn’t going to work at all, but I was here and I still liked the tree. I thought quickly and decided that I could eliminate the foreground from the composition in order to get a little better exposure balance to the scene. In order to do that, I was going to need to zoom in much closer so I swapped out my lens for the 70-200mm which had the reach that I needed for this new composition.
I framed up the image and dialed in the exposure as close to the right that I could get. That would give me more shadow detail and if I played my cards correctly I wouldn’t blow out any of the highlight details. I made the exposure and looked at the histogram and watched for blinkies. The histogram looked good, but I could see a bit of overexposure in the clouds so I backed off of the shutter by a third of a stop which resulted in no overexposures in the image. The left side of the histogram looked good with nothing blocked up so I was pretty sure I had the right exposure settings now. I dialed in the composition a few more times and even tried a vertical image of the tree just in case that worked better.
I will admit that I liked the vertical image, but it was just too much like a snapshot with the tree centered under a puffy cloud. There was no visual drama or tension to the image and it looked like a forgettable composition to me so I decided to keep the original horizontal composition. This one had a better balance and made better use of the space in the frame I thought. I was able to pull a lot of detail out of the shadows so that the tree had a bit more character without looking fake. The textures in the hill to the right were enhanced by the early Fall colors developing in the trees. The clouds in the background had just enough texture to them to stay interesting and they seemed to follow the landscape which added to the effectiveness of them as an element in the frame.
With the sun steadily dropping, I knew that the light wasn’t going to get any better here so I packed up and headed further North to see what I could find elsewhere on the Parkway. I was thinking about Thunder Hill, but when I got there, it was packed with a group of folks and I didn’t feel like adding to that crowd. I also considered Ravens Roost which is a great place for a sunset, but that too was packed. The overlooks to the East were looking very good though with the sun hitting just the tops of the mountains and the clouds were already picking up some soft color in that direction. I decided that I was going to find something to the East to shoot so that I could take advantage of the lighting on the ridges as well as the clouds overhead.
When I arrived at Grandview Overlook, I saw only one other car there and the scene from the overlook was just what I had been after. It has been a while since I have shot anything from here since it is typically one of the first ones that I come to any time I enter the Parkway. In fact, it was my favorite overlook when I used to come out for drives when I was in college in the 90’s. I have spent many an hour at this overlook so there just isn’t that much that excites me here any more. However, I had some great light and clouds here for a change and I was anxious to give it a try. I didn’t see a composition right off and started to think about doing a panorama to capture the entire stretch of the overlook. However, when I started to look at that option critically, I decided against it because it was the smaller compositions that were going to be more compelling. I started out with my 24-70mm lens and looked for compositions. I was having a hard time picking ones out and found myself wanting extra reach. I swapped out to my 70-200mm lens and went back to looking. I found a few compositions that I liked, but I wasn’t satisfied with them. As I moved around to get things in place in the frame I found that I was wanting to go wider than 70mm, so I switched back to my 24-70mm lens. It was with that lens that I started to find the compositions that I was after. I wasn’t using any filters for this because the exposure was quite simple, and I didn’t think that I needed the help of the polarizer as the sky had plenty of contrast to it already. This was just going to be a straightforward shot.
The composition that I decided on was a simple on that focused on the sunlight on the mountains to the left. It was even more impressive with the deep clouds above the hills, but just to make sure that I had the right balance and could show some depth, I made sure that I included a valley below and to the right of the main subject. This shadowed valley was the key to the image and was the reason that I shot several frames of this very composition so that I could choose the right amount of shadow that I needed for the image. This one was just perfect with just a hint of sunlight to the right that provided a visual frame for the lower right of the image while keeping a good deal of that corner in the shadows. The background was the receding mountains with an amber sky above to highlight the transition to the clouds overhead. It wasn’t quite my normal image, but I really liked how it was looking, especially now that there was a large white cloud directly overhead that anchored the image quite well in my opinion.
As I was shooting that previous composition, my eyes were constantly on the lookout for the changing conditions. They had spotted the colors getting much more vivid to the right over the opposite side of the overlook view. I trained the camera over in that direction and swapped over to the telephoto lens once again. I thought that I was going to need the reach to get the composition that I was after but after moving the camera around, I found that I wanted to go wider than 70mm in order to captured more of the sky above. I went back to my standard lens and framed an image that you see here. What I liked about this one was that the upper cloud mimics the shape of the mountain below and there is another bank of clouds that splits the scene and fills the otherwise negative space. There are subtle clues to the depth of the image with the haze present in the midground mountain range which transitions to a much less clear background due to the haze. The clouds provide the needed texture for the visual drama of the image. This is a cloudscape more than a landscape image since the landscape is largely in the shadows at this point. The mountains are just there to provide a visual anchor and resting point for your eyes. The real story is the sky and that is where I expect the eyes to stay for the most part. It is not a favorite image from the day, but it was good enough to be a keeper out of the group.
It was the last image of the day that might be my favorite one. I was continuing to be enamored with the light hitting the tips of the mountains to the left of the overlook. As the time had ticked by, the shadows had overtaken more and more of the mountains and the sky was starting to soften as the clouds moved along their path. I wanted to shoot another composition from this angle but get it in tighter since the light was now gone from the valley below. I was just wanting to focus on the light kissing the mountains for this last image. I had enough reach in my 24-70mm lens to pull that composition off so there was no need to change out the lens again. I got the composition framed like I wanted it with just enough of the shadows below to provide a visual boundary for the bottom of the frame. I worked the camera right and left until I found the right visual balance in the scene. Then, it was just a matter of setting the exposure and releasing the shutter. By this time, I was nailing the exposure as the light levels were remaining constant over the landscape. I didn’t need but a single exposure here because I could tell that I had nailed it in terms of composition and exposure.
By this time, I had shot 67 frames since leaving the house some four hours before. I wanted to try one more location before the light dwindled so I packed up my gear and got back in the truck. As I moved down the road I could tell that the light was gone and I wasn’t going to find anything else to shoot at this point. I went ahead and exited onto Old 421 and headed home. I wasn’t sure what I had captured as I talked to myself about the day’s images. As I went through them, none of them really jumped out at me as being special. I started to consider the real possibility that none of them would make the cut and I would end up trashing them all. I had gotten images that I liked with the situations that I had found to photograph, but I just wasn’t sure that they would be on par with what I was expecting out of my photography.
When I got home, I was pretty sure that I would just wait until the next day to look at them when I had a chance to clear my mind first. Toni even suggested that I do that. We had a quick dinner and I sat on the couch to watch television. It just wasn’t that easy for me though, I really wanted to see what I had gotten from the day. There were a few that I had hopes for, and I wasn’t going to be able to sleep unless I knew if I had captured the image that I was after or not. So, against my better judgement I headed downstairs to the office to get started on the images. I really wasn’t all that excited to see the RAW images on the screen of the computer as they just really lacked punch. However, I looking at the compositions I found a good number that worked. The more I worked through the images the more I started to like the exposures and I ended up with these six images from the day. It was not an easy day, but it did turn into a good day by the end of the editing process, and it was good to get out for a while.
If you see an image here that speaks to you, I would love the opportunity to match you up with a print of your very own. Just let me know what you want and we can go from there. Also, be sure to check out the upcoming workshops for the rest of 2020 to see if there is one that fits your needs. I have a landscape workshop coming up on October 30th at Stone Mountain, a Decay Workshop in East Bend on November 14th, and I’ll be finishing out the year at Hanging Rock for a Waterfall Workshop on December 5th. Of course, I have plenty of openings for individual or group instruction if that is more your speed. I’m happy to help budding photographers learn their craft so that they can produce the images that they are wanting to.
Until next time…
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