Thursday, June 25, 2026
Welcome back! My treks have been kind of hit and miss for the past month it seems. I’ve been tied up with other things and have been kind of struggling a bit when it comes to seeing the point in going out with the camera lately. It isn’t so much a creative block as it is just not being motivated to pick the camera up. I’ve even been out a few times scouting over the last week or so trying to get something rolling. Nothing has really jumped out at me though, and after my last trek which was a bit more successful than I had really thought at the time, I was hesitant to just go out for some photos. Even though my plans last time didn’t really pan out, I managed to really capture some pretty strong photographs, and I wanted to build on that rather than just go out to press the buttons on the camera. The question was what did I want to capture?
For some reason, I wasn’t feeling like going out searching for old cars, and the lure of rust wasn’t as strong as usual. I had been considering doing some work in the studio either with smoke or with an oil and water mixture for some different kinds of abstracts. I had really kind of wanted to go out and work some waterfalls, but there just hasn’t been enough rain lately to really make that worthwhile. That did get me thinking about landscapes which is something that I haven’t really done much of here in the last few years. This strikes me as odd since I started out with the intentions on becoming a landscape photographer more than two decades ago. It seems that my decay photography has really taken over as the primary focus of my photography over the last few years, but I do still want to spend time capturing the landscape.
Most of the places that I would want to go are more than an hour from home which isn’t a huge problem except for the fact that I was wanting to get out for sunrise. With sunrise currently just a few minutes after 6am and the good light kicking off around thirty minutes before that, I am left with needing to be at the location and ready with the camera by 5:30am. Add to that the hour it takes to get places, and the time that I need to wake myself up, that is getting pretty early in the morning. I’m not that much of a morning person, so I’m usually happier waiting for later in the morning to go out and do things in the daylight. The urge was there to shoot a sunrise though, and I needed to pay attention to that urge since it was the only thing that was giving me reason to pick up the camera again.
My first thought was to go out to The Lump Overlook which is actually kind of close to the house at less than 30 minutes away. It would be easy to get to, and I knew a composition that I could shoot. There was a morning earlier in the week when the weather was looking promising for a sunrise and I made plans to get out that morning. When I woke up and checked the weather, the clouds were all gone and nothing but clear skies were forecasted. This wasn’t a good setup for a sunrise, so I rolled over and went back to sleep. Wednesday morning was a repeat of the whole thing with the alarm going off at 4am and the clouds not showing up. I ended up taking the Miata out for a bit later that day and ended up on the Parkway to check out the overlook since it had been a while since I had been there.
The vegetation around the guardrail for the road was grown up taller than I remembered and it was taller than I felt would really work for the photo I had in mind. Getting higher in the parking area for the overlook, I was able to find a better view of the distant mountains, but they were not looking all that great without the vantage point of the roadway in the foreground. It was still a possibility, but I wasn’t really holding out a lot of hope for a great photograph, especially if I wasn’t able to get the clouds to cooperate.
I continued driving on the Parkway and eventually came to the Grandview Overlook closer to Boone. This was one of the first overlooks that I photographed way back when. It might have been the first sunrise that I captured on the Blue Ridge Parkway when I was still shooting with a Sony F-828 point and shoot camera. I remembered how great the colors had been there as the sky erupted in a brilliant red with tons of textures in the clouds. It had been a great way to start out with sunrises, and just like that I started to form the idea to return to this spot for another attempt at a sunrise.
It wasn’t the best spot out there, but it was close to home, easy to get to, and offered a larger view than what I had been considering up until that point. I would have a few different compositional options here as well as a panoramic option that I was familiar with capturing from a few different daylight stops here. It seemed to be a pretty good option for a morning trek and quite possibly a better option than The Lump.
Looking at the weather for Thursday morning, the clouds were showing to be in the upper atmosphere and coming into the area right at sunrise. The skies were clear leading up to that point, so there was a question about how effective the clouds were going to be when the sun was at the horizon. It was worth setting the alarm for though, which I did. When it rang at 4am, I looked at the different weather forecasts and found that the clouds were still in the forecast and might actually be a little thicker than originally forecasted. Even the sunrise forecaster was showing the potential for some color, though nothing extraordinary was expected. It was enough to get me out of bed and heading out the door.
Once I had finished getting some breakfast, I loaded the truck and headed West to the Parkway just like old times. It was very dark and I could see the stars in the sky above which was not ideal. The clouds were supposed to come in just before 6am, so I was hopeful that they were on the way. I would know shortly after arriving if things were going to work out. Since I had left a little earlier than expected, I arrived at the overlook around 5:15 which gave me plenty of time to consider the options and go to an alternate location if things weren’t going to work out.
Looking out over the landscape, I could see that there were some thin clouds coming into view which were going to work out very nicely I suspected. It was still too dark to get out and get the camera set up, so I stayed in the comfort of the truck. The temperature reading outside was showing 55-degrees which should have been comfortable. However, when I had opened the door to the truck, the cold wind blew in and immediately made me regret not wearing jeans and a jacket. I was dressed for warm weather, so this was going to be rough standing out in the wind for thirty minutes or more as the light changed across the scene.
When I saw the first blush starting, I decided it was time to brave the cold wind and get things set up. I had a feeling that I was going to be shooting a few panoramas, so I went ahead and fit the telephoto lens to the camera which would also be good at picking out the details in the distance. I didn’t have a lot of color in the sky to work with and most of it was right at the horizon which made the long lens a natural choice.
I started out with single exposures capturing where the color was. This made the most sense because my exposure times were around 30 seconds which was just too long for a string of images for a panorama. I kept capturing those single images for a little while until the exposure times dropped to just a couple of seconds. That was quick enough that I could start shooting some series for a panorama without the light changing too much.
The tripod had already been leveled, so I just needed to rotate the camera and get an exposure set for the full length of the scene. Once I did that, I was all set for a few panoramic shots. I ended up doing a five-image pano as well as two seven-image ones. It was the last of those which turned into the best example for the day with the best color and framing. When I was finished with all three versions of the panorama, I went back to shooting single frames as the light changed. I was hoping for a second blush, but the color soon faded too much to hold out any more hope. I was pretty numb at this point and I needed to get back in the truck to get warmed up.
Yes, I realize that it is Summer and the high temperature for home is going to be nearly 90, but I was frozen after standing out in the cold wind for roughly 40 minutes. I had the heat on full blast and the seat heater was on as well. It was just like going out in the Winter only I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt. That had been a very poor decision on my part, but I was getting warmed up at least.
I noticed that the sky was still holding some faint warm hues from the sunrise, and I felt that there should be another photo or two waiting for me further down the Parkway. As I drove, I kept my eyes out for that next opportunity and hoped that I would find something that looked good before I decided to head home. None of the overlooks were looking all that great to me even though the sky was still looking decent. Everything was just kind of boring or overgrown to the point where there were distractions in the foreground. I needed something that just looked right before I stopped and pulled the camera back out.
The answer came as I passed a little spot that I had photographed several times in the past. It was a gated pasture that had a nice view of some of the mountains in the distance. The light was good over the scene, and the sky was still holding onto some of the morning color. It was enough to get me to turn around and pull off on the side of the road to check it out again. Everything about the scene was looking good to me, and I knew that there were several ways to photograph this scene. I wanted to use a bit of compression to keep the mountains in the distance looking large over the fence. This meant that I was going to fit the telephoto lens once again.
Since the sun wasn’t fully up, I didn’t bother with a polarizer because I figured that it wasn’t going to make that much difference and with the breeze, I wanted to have a faster shutter speed more than a little glare control. Once I got the camera set up, I moved around to try and find the best spot to capture the scene. I needed to be far enough back that I was able to get all the foreground that I wanted. Once I had that figured out, it was time to move left and right to figure out the best organization of the scene between where the mountain was an where the fence was. I also had to keep in mind the trees on either side of the pasture as they formed the framing for the image. It was a bit harder than it looks, but I was able to make short work out of it because I was familiar with how I wanted this scene to appear in the camera.
It really didn’t take that long to get the shot captured and I was pretty sure that I had at least one frame that would work out. I wasn’t nearly as cold as I had been before, but I didn’t see any benefit to staying out of the truck any longer. The sun was steadily rising, and the color was fading quickly from the sky. I was feeling pretty good about the two locations that I had photographed and there was a bit of nostalgia involved as well since these were both favorites of mine many years ago.
It was still pretty early in the day, and I didn’t really need to get back home just yet so I thought about where else I could go. The sky wasn’t looking all that great at this point and I felt that doing more landscapes would probably not be the answer. However, I was entering Ashe County which has some great rural scenes and the sky was looking pretty good for some of those. I just needed to find something to put in front of the camera. The question is, did I find anything?
You will have to wait until tomorrow to find out.
Until then…
