Monday, October 9, 2023
There is just something about this time of year that I am starting to really dislike. No, it’s not the cooler weather. I love that. No, it’s not the fact that the leaves are changing colors. I still really enjoy seeing that. I don’t think it has anything to do with the days getting short. I actually like being able to watch TV without the sunlight glaring on the screen in the evenings. So, what is it that I am starting to dislike. Well, if I had to put my finger on it, I would have to say the amount of people that are flocking to the Blue Ridge Parkway. I can remember even five years ago when things weren’t like this. Each year it gets worse, and each year I say I’m not going to return up here for photos. Obviously, this was not that year. However, I think I saw in excess of 4,572 people between the Hwy 181 bridge and Old US 421. I would say that 90% of the people that I saw were holding their phone out getting a photo, and 3% had an actual camera. There were two that I saw with tripods which surprised me, but my hat’s off to them. I saw what had to be influencers with videos being shot while they were talking. Parking was overflowing at every overlook, and even the hiking trails were packed with droves of people. I’m all for folks getting out and enjoying our mountains, but we are going to reach a breaking point sooner than later at this rate.
Far too many of these folks that are visiting the Parkway are leaving more than a trace behind. There is trash along the roadway, and ruts being dug into the shoulders from the makeshift overflow parking everywhere. No matter where you look there are other people. Granted, there is a large section of the Parkway that is closed right now for repair which is forcing more people into this popular area. With the patterns I’ve seen over the recent years, I’m going to bet that there will be some type of restrictions implemented on the Parkway whether it be a toll that has to be paid, or large-scale parking enforcement which will change the whole nature of the Blue Ridge Parkway. These kinds of things have happened at other popular destinations such as Yellowstone National Park, and most recently a small Vermont Community which has had to close the road during the Fall. This is a trend that I have been paying attention to, and even wrote about it a while back in a Behind the Camera. It seems that the cause of it has started to be linked to online influencers, which I can see the connection to. The long and short of it is, the influencers feel that they are entitled to be at all the popular places and must do so for their viewers. Then the viewers see where they have been and want to go there too (hence the influencer part). It feeds off of itself until things get crazy. Of course, this is a rant for another time, but it is why I like to travel alone and go where others aren’t.
Last year, I just opted out for the most part and stuck with my decay photography and largely left the Fall colors to the masses. This year, I felt like I really wanted to get out and capture some Fall color once again since I’ve had a pretty big resurgence in my landscape photography since the Spring. Honestly, I have been really fighting with myself over whether or not to get mixed up with the crowds this year. Fortunately, the weather has forced my hand more than anything with every day being sunny which I don’t particularly enjoy when it comes to landscape photography. I did manage to get out briefly the other day and capture some of the early color near Blowing Rock. It was a nice trek and got me thinking about doing more with the seasonal shift. The crowds weren’t terrible that day and I had hopes for a return trip.
Well, that chance for a return trip happened today because I had to go into Boone to pick up a few things for a service on Toni’s car which is coming up soon. I figured that while I was in Boone, I would try and take advantage of some clouds and rain that were supposed to be moving through the area during the mid afternoon. I didn’t really put it together that it was a holiday and there were probably a large group of folks on a long weekend sharing my destination. Oh well, I had things in motion about the time Toni left for work. I grabbed my gear and headed West into town. From there I went up to Blowing Rock and accessed the Parkway going South. My intention was to stop at Rough Ridge and Beacon Heights because I knew that the colors would be pretty good there.
Well, I could see the error of my ways not long after getting on the Parkway. There were lines of cars in both directions, and nobody was getting anywhere fast. Every overlook was filled with cars, and there were lots of areas where cars were parked on the shoulder partially in the roadway. I worked my way down to Cone Manor and then Price Lake to see that both were overflowing with vehicles. I didn’t even pull in to see if there was anything to photograph. I just kept on plugging away down to Rough Ridge. When I arrived there, the parking lot was packed and the shoulders were filled with cars for probably 75 yards. A swing and a miss for that location. When I made it to the other side of the Viaduct, I reached Beacon Heights which wasn’t quite as full, but I saw way too much activity where I would need to park. The light still wasn’t all that great here so there was no sense adding to the noise.
I just kept on going South and thought about a bridge that I have shot many times over the years. I really thought that if there was color, it would make a really strong composition. The fact that it wasn’t an overlook, or even something that would be seen as a place to stop made it possible that I could have it all to myself. It wasn’t too far of a drive before I arrived at the bridge. I was in a line of three cars at the time, and ducked off on the shoulder quickly when I saw nobody else was there. The sun was still kind of bright, but I could see that the clouds were moving in as I had hoped for. This wasn’t a grand landscape by any stretch, but I did have some Fall color and a really nice main subject for a photo. I knew enough about this location to know where I needed to be, and what lens would work best for the situation. I still grabbed my bag just in case I needed filters, or a different lens.
I went across the road to the small embankment to get the tripod set up. I then grabbed the camera with the 16-35mm lens which I knew would work perfectly here. I added a polarizer because I wanted to get all the saturation that I could out of the colors in the trees. It only took a minute to get the composition that I wanted and then it was a matter of waiting for the light to do what I wanted it to do and for the clouds to fill the sky in the right way. When those elements lined up the way I wanted them to, I found that I had to be really quick to time my exposures between cars. It seemed that every time the light was right, there would be a strong of cars that would come through the frame. I would occasionally capture one just entering or leaving the frame, but most of the time, I would end up with the light not in the right intensity.
This was the routine for several minutes as the clouds got thicker. I would try and time my shots so that all three important elements would line up. It only happened a handful of times, and of those I ended up having to choose from only two frames that looked the way I wanted them to. The difference which put this one ahead was how the clouds were a bit lighter right at the bridge which gave some separation and provided a bit of highlight to the main element in the scene. The sunlight on the tree across the road was a very important element for the composition because I really wanted to have the colors of the tree as a bit of a complementing element to the bridge. It was that large archway and the textures of the blocks that really stood out to me. This was not a photo of the season, but rather the season helped to make the main subject that much more engaging.
After 25 exposures I decided that I had what I wanted from the bridge. It was frame number 21 that got the edit, so I’m glad I stuck with it as long as I did. Before I packed it all in, I decided to look around for another composition since I was here and short of the heavier than usual traffic, I was pretty much alone. I saw a few sections of the tree line on the opposite side of the road which grabbed my attention, but I couldn’t resolve a composition that made sense. Instead, I started to look at the bridge once again, but from the other side of the road. I had attempted this composition years ago and to my memory failed at it. The shadows had been too much, and the sky caused all kinds of problems. The lighting looked to be a bit softer now, which made me want to try it again. There was also the matter of the colorful trees just to the side of the bridge which added a lot of visual interest as well.
I worked my way around the embankment to find the right angle on the bridge. I chose an angle that allowed me to see a bit of the opposite embankment through the bridge opening. I liked that little detail for the added depth that it gave. I found the right height to have the camera and then started to compose the frame. Unlike the last time, I chose to bring in a lot of the sky because the clouds were really looking pretty good at this point. When I had the composition that I liked, I started to look at the exposure. There was a lot more dynamic range in this scene than I had been working with on the other side. My histogram was fully split with the sky forcing the rest of the scene into deep shadow. I could wait for the sun to light things up again, but I was thinking that wasn’t going to work since the opposite side of the road was largely in the shadows based on how things were looking when I was standing over there earlier.
Instead of waiting for the sun which was probably not going to come out brightly as it had for the last composition, I chose to add a 3-stop soft edge ND Grad to my filter holder and see if that would do the trick. It helped, but with a quick test photo, I could see that I was still clipping parts of the sky in order to get the lower parts of the scene out of the shadows. I slid in another 2-stop soft grad staggered above the 3-stop one which pulled the sky down just enough to get the exposure to where I really wanted it.
Over the next few minutes, I fired off 23 frames as the light, clouds, and cars changed. I didn’t take much time to reflect after each shot because things were happening quite quickly. Apparently, the light was fading really quick because it was frame number eight which deserved the edit. The rest of the series, while the sky looked better, the light on the bridge and trees had faded away much darker than when I had set the shot up. It had been gradual, and I didn’t even realize the change, but looking at Lightroom, there was no doubt that the right exposure was much earlier on. As it turned out, I really liked how the eighth frame looked after the edit. The soft sunlight over the scene worked better here than the slightly harder light I had for the earlier composition. The colors all came out beautifully and had just the right impact for the scene.
I now had 49 frames shot for what I was thinking would turn out to be only a single image. I kind of got spoiled on my last trek where I was only shooting a couple of frames for each composition and coming away with an extraordinary hit rate. This is what landscape photography is like more often than not though. To get that good image, you have to take a bunch of ones that you eventually throw away, because you lucked out to get the right combination of elements, even though there was no guarantee that would happen. I was confident that I had my first shot in the bag at least, and that gave me the motivation to keep plugging away at this for a while longer.
I packed everything back up and put it in the truck. I could have continued South to Linville Fals, but I knew that would be a madhouse, and I wasn’t really wanting to do anything with the falls today. Instead, I got turned around and worked my way back to the North. I was hoping that the rain wasn’t going to cause me any problems. I had noticed that it was starting while I was putting the camera away. It was just a slight drizzle which I could deal with. If I was really lucky, it would cause a lot of the folks up here to take a break and go get some lunch or something.
One of the first overlooks that I recall passing after leaving the bridge was one for Grandfather Mountain. I think I might have stopped here back when I had my Sony F-828 camera, but I know I haven’t been here any time recently. The overlook has never been all that interesting to me, but there was something interesting about it this time. Well, two things actually. First of all, there was only a single car in the parking area which was a surprise considering the amount of people still driving around. The second thing that interested me was a bright red tree right off of the parking area to the left of the overlook. It was the only color really worth mentioning here and I liked how it looked with the blue tones of the sky in the background. The one car was in the way for the shot, but if I played my cards right, I might be able to get the shot framed up and when they left, I could get it captured. It was worth a try, so I pulled in and parked out of the way.
I went to get the camera from the back and took a quick guess that the 24-70mm lens would be the right choice for this scene. I added a polarizer and mounted it to the tripod as I started to frame up the composition. I wanted to be able to get the shot when the car left, but I wasn’t liking how things were looking here just yet. As I was fiddling with the composition, another truck pulled in and parked right in front of where I was shooting. I now had two vehicles in my frame, and that wasn’t going to work at all. I pondered my options and realized that I needed to be closer to the tree and be shooting at a wider focal length.
Fortunately, the truck didn’t stay long and when they drove off, I moved up and planted the tripod about where I thought it needed to be. The composition felt much better from this location, and I liked the scaling of the elements better. I worked on a composition that used two dead trees in the lower right to frame the image while the summit of Grandfather Mountain was around the upper right third which felt right for the composition. I started to make some exposures and then I would tweak the camera placement to change where the elements were in the frame. During this time, it was starting to rain once again, and I had to keep my hand over the polarizer to keep it from getting drops on it. Usually, I would have my hat, but I was moving so fast that I forgot to put it on since my main concern was the vehicular traffic. As I was shooting the various compositions, another six or seven cars came into the overlook. What had been pretty much a wide-open spot, was not getting packed with cars.
At least I had decided that the better composition was closer to the tree so there was very little chance that a car would be able to get in my shot at this point. I just had to worry about the folks out of their cars at this point. There was a group of photographers now just out of my frame to the right. They were shooting with what looked to be a 400mm lens and talking about how they were able to get Grandfather Mountain so easily. I remember shooting a similar composition to that the first time I was here. I never really liked it and didn’t see much visual interest in it. What I was working on this time was something much different because of the foreground that I was using. I loved how the red tree seemed to curve into some other similar colors at the lower edge of the frame which brought your eyes to the bare trees. This all framed the iconic mountain in the distance and added so much visual interest. Of course, a big part of this composition was the red tree, but the photo wasn’t about just capturing the season, the season just provided an element to make the composition better.
I know that this composition seems really simple and there should be no reason to spend a lot of time here, but I was again playing the game of wait for the sky, and the light to work together. I also kept improving the composition, so the best composition was later in the grouping. What you are seeing above is the 29th out of 32 frames which turned into the one that I edited. Other than the different lighting on the foreground and the appearance of the sky, what made this one stand out was the balance between the elements in the scene. I tried several different placements of Grandfather Mountain where it was lower, and further to the right, and even a bit further to the left. The composition that I landed on happened to be one where the camera was panned a bit far to the right and it captured a bit of a limb from the tree on the other side of the overlook. This limb was a distraction and something that I didn’t want in the frame which was why I tried everything possible to keep it out with the framing of the scene. However, the balance of the image dictated that I frame the scene in a way that included that lone branch. I shot this scene for how I intended to edit it. I made sure that the branch was in a position where I could easily remove it in post without causing any problems. It worked well and took a matter of seconds to remove in Lightroom.
With those 32 frames captured and the parking lot filling up quickly, I decided to pack it in and go to calmer areas. I didn’t like being run off by sightseers, but I really had no other option. At least I was finally looking at some really nice lighting and a great sky. As long as I could find compositions that avoided other people, I was going to get some pretty decent photographs. At least that was the hope as I continued on my way North in search of the next location to shoot.
One of the tricks that I have found when shooting Fall Foliage is that I look for isolated trees that stand out among the remaining green ones. This really adds to the punch of the colorful trees, and that was what I started to look for. At the elevations that I was at, peak had not hit and green was still one of the dominant colors. That made it easy to find the bright trees which I happened to spot around a bend in the road. It was not far from an overlook which I used to get turned around in. It was kind of full of cars, but I saw nothing from that overlook that made me want to stick around there. I wanted to get back to that single tree I had seen a second ago.
When I pulled off the road in front of that tree, I found that there was another one across the road which was colored roughly the same way. I liked the scene and thought that there was certainly something that I could do with these trees. I grabbed the camera with the same 24-70mm lens that I had used from the last overlook and started to look at the tree to the right. In full disclosure, I was looking for some isolations within the tree because I thought that the trunk structure was really nice. The more I looked, the less interesting the structure of the tree looked, and there was just too much red in the scene to make the image work for how I wanted it to. I started to back away from the tree to see if there was a composition where it could just be an element. I liked how it was looking with the rain clouds above and how the Parkway snaked around beneath it. That was going to be my composition. I flipped the camera in the ballhead with the help of the L Plate that I have attached and framed up a vertical composition. As luck would have it, the road had actually been empty while I was figuring out the composition, and now that I had one framed up, the cars were coming at a very quick rate. I finally spotted a break in them and fired off a shot. It looked good, but I didn’t like the balance when I really started to examine it. The tree was too dominant in the frame and the rest of the elements just looked crowded.
I decided to flip the camera once again and go for a horizontal composition this time. For this to work out for the best, I was able to include the tree on the opposite side of the road which turned into a bookend element to compliment the larger tree to the right. The Parkway was framed between them both and brought my eyes right to the sky. This was the composition that I wanted to commit to. There were a few subtle changes to the framing to alter the impact of the roadway to the scene, but largely, I was timing the exposures between cars. It doesn’t look like it, but in pretty much all of the shots I made there were cars just out of the view around the bend in the road, and usually a car just out of view to the left. In many frames, I would get a taillight, or the bumper of a car just edging into the frame. Finding this much road empty was not an easy task, but I kept with it.
There were a total of eleven frames shot here, and the one that you are looking at was lucky number seven. This was the one where the sky, lighting, and lack of cars all came together in a single frame. It wasn’t anything like what I had seen when I first started to think about capturing the tree, but the end result was one that I really liked. It seemed to capture the mood of the day with the somber lighting and sporadic color along the roadway. It certainly fits my style of landscape photographs with the moody sky which I have been missing for most of the season thus far. While I do enjoy a sunny day, I just don’t care for them in photos. This interesting sky could carry a photograph all by itself, but when I am able to find a compelling scene to place beneath a sky like this the entire photograph becomes greater than the sum of its parts. At least that is how I see it. This composition works very well, but only because of the interest in the sky and the variation in colors of the trees. Imagine what this same composition would look like in the middle of Summer on a cloudless day around lunch time. You wouldn’t even recognize the scene I bet.
I was actually feeling quite good about things at this point. I knew that I had a few keepers in the bag which was more than I had really anticipated. I had really thought that if I were lucky, I would get two or three for the whole time that I was up here. There was still a good bit of Parkway to cover before I had to exit onto US 421. I knew that I wasn’t going to go up to Doughton today because those colors were not going to be ready just yet, and I wanted to get home earlier than that would allow. I didn’t know what else I would find, but I still had a lot of roadway to cover to search something out.
As I continued down the road, the rain kept coming and going, but that didn’t dissuade me at all. It did make me wish that my umbrella holder had already arrived from Amazon though. After years of considering adding one to my bag, I finally broke down and bought one so that I could more efficiently work the camera with an umbrella over the rig. I wasn’t sure if I would need it today, but the option would have been nice. As it was, if it started to rain hard, I was going to have to hold the umbrella with a hand while adjusting the camera with my other hand, or possibly holding the umbrella between my hand and the camera which is how it usually goes. I’m actually looking forward to having this bit of kit in my bag for the next rainy day I end up facing.
By the time I got to Price Lake again, I had the urge to dip into the boat rental area to see how things were looking from that angle. As I drove into the parking area, I was shocked to only see about a half dozen cars. Equally as shocking was the fact that there were no boats in the lake. I couldn’t help myself; I pulled into a parking space and grabbed the camera. The colors were not outstanding by any stretch, but there was something there that grabbed my attention. I didn’t know what I wanted to shoot first, so I just went down the stairs to my favorite lower vantage point at the shore. When I go to the base of the steps, I saw a gentleman fishing off at the corner. I was pretty sure that I wasn’t going to cause him any issues, but I greeted him and asked if I would be in his way. He assured me that I would cause him ho problems and to help myself. I thanked him and started to set the camera up.
Having shot here many times at sunrise, I kind of knew the compositions and angles available and grabbed my telephoto lens which would give me the right reach for the compositions that I was wanting to shoot. I clipped on the polarizer as well just to make sure that I had the right saturation levels in the frame. I then started to hunt the section of trees that I wanted to capture. I was really hoping for some sunlight to provide a bit of separation to the scene because the area that I wanted to capture had two different banks, but they tended to blend together without the right light, or some fog.
I got the composition framed up and looked at the exposure values. It seemed that the sky was a bit too bright to be able to expose the trees like I wanted to. I went to the bag and pulled a 2-stop hard edge ND Grad from my filter wallet which was slid into the holder. Once I had a histogram that I liked, I fired off a test shot. This was followed with another one that had a slightly different exposure value. As it turned out, the first image was better than the second, but I had not repeated the composition beyond that because I was not seeing any difference in lighting happening which would have given me a bit of separation. Instead of waiting on what was likely to never show up, I started working other compositions.
I turned my attention to the little boardwalk overlook that I have shot numerous times now and found some other areas on the opposite bank to work with. I didn’t spend a lot of time with any of those because they just really weren’t working out. I was really needing to find more color to make the compositions stand out a bit better. Feeling like I was running into a dead end, and not wanting to overstay my welcome with the guy fishing and enjoying the quiet, I decided to go check out the boat rental area where I had such good luck recently during a mentorship session. I left the camera all put together as I walked over to that part of the lake.
I wanted to like what I saw better than I did, but the reality was that there wasn’t much color at all in that direction and there was not any interesting light around the boats. In fact, there was nothing at all that interested me at this location. I had been able to do so much better with the conditions the last time, and this was just a letdown compared to that. If there is no chance of improving on the photos, I would rather not take the time to attempt any more photographs here. Instead, I went back out to the main parking lot and started to look around for something that might make a good photo.
The only thing that I found was a tree which was a nice yellow color against the bluish sky. I used the telephoto lens to isolate a portion of it and I shot two frames focusing on the structure of the tree. I thought it was a decent photo and didn’t bother to tweak it anymore. Sadly, the concept was just a bit boring and I didn’t even move past a single star when culling the images. It did put me in the spot for the next composition that I was going to work on though.
The composition that I spotted while working that isolation of the tree was not an unfamiliar composition, only a much different location than I had shot it from. The subject was the little pier on the walking trail across the lake. I have shot this subject many times, and had even fired off several frames from the shoreline earlier in the day. I was now up in the parking lot elevated a good bit above the water now. There was a small section where I could shoot between the trees and brush that lined the parking lot. This gave me just enough room to get the same composition that I had been shooting below, but with the benefit of some extra altitude. While the difference was minor, it allowed me to see more of the platform surface rather than just the side of the pier. This helped to add depth to the scene and gave the platform a bit more presence in the composition.
As I was framing this one up, I liked how it looked a lot. It had all the elements from earlier that I liked with the added umph to the platform. I ended up shooting five frames with slightly different framing and exposures. When I got home and culled the images, I ended up liking the second and fourth frames the best. I started editing the second frame first and got it as far as I could, but still didn’t like how the tree was looking on the left side of the frame. There was just too much light on it, or something. I looked at the fourth frame and saw that the light was a bit flatter, but the overall effect of the photo seemed to be the same. I just synced the edit to that frame and then compared them both. The fourth one was definitely superior in that one regard, and it was a wash in every other sense. I abandoned the first edit and worked on tweaking the fourth image to what you see here.
I have long since wanted to capture this scene in the Fall and have tried several times to do so. While this was certainly not a peak Fall shot, it was pretty darn close, and I really liked that the one orange tree really showed up in the sea of greens and yellows. The slight change in elevation with the camera made all the difference in the world and I hate that I have missed that little detail until now. This is definitely the best place to shoot this composition and I would have never spotted it had I not spent the time trying to capture that tree against the sky. Everything happens for a reason, and even though those photos failed on several levels, they opened the door for this one to appear which I found very much worth the time and effort to capture.
I wanted to see what was going on at the amphitheater since it had been a very long time since I have visited there, so I made the quick walk that way. There was no color there, and nothing that stood out to me photographically. I did notice that the rain was starting to fall pretty heavily at this point which meant that I was needing to get the camera put away. Once I did that, I went back to the truck and got ready to head out. I didn’t know it, but my day was done. I didn’t see anything else along the Parkway, and the rain was falling hard enough that it was going to impair any attempts at photography. There were two different locations back in Wilkesboro that I wanted to check out, so when I got to Old 421, I just headed back towards home.
The first stop was what looked to be a Model T on the top of a hill by a house. I spotted that on the return trip, but somebody had covered it up for the rain. I wasn’t sure the condition it was in, but I could see rust and the open ragtop roof. I guess it was a project car of smore sort and the owner didn’t want it to get rained on. It was probably not something that I would want to photograph anyway. The next stop was a business lot where I had seen a ’60’s Impala beside of a building. I found this one again too and went in a little closer. The car was in not too bad a shape, and obviously a low rider. It didn’t quite fit the look that I was after, so I took a pass on that one as well.
Even though the day ended before I was really ready for it to, I still managed to shoot 109 frames which all included scenes with Fall colors. Of those, I ended up editing and keeping six photographs which was better than the three or so I had figured I would come away with when I started the trek. I had seen sunny skies, cloudy skies, and eventually, a full-on rain shower. This is the kind of weather that I ultimately love when it comes to landscape photography because it really allows me to capture a full range of moods. The day had turned out very good and I was happy with the new images that have been added to the collection.
I do hope that you have enjoyed the photos and the story behind this trek. I appreciate you reading along as I talk about the struggles and successes of landscape photography. I know there are many of you who will read through every word for either entertainment or enrichment. Whatever the case, I thank you. I hope that there are others that at least look through these new entries for the photos that are included because it will be some time before I am posting these on social media. I have a rather lengthy backlog of photos waiting to be shared, and as of today, I have just posted the last image from this blog entry back in July. I have well over 100 images waiting to be shared so that means that my fall images will be popping up in January. I guess this is the real benefit to subscribing to the blogs and reading or skimming through them when they are published. You get to see the new images before most will, and you get to see them in roughly real time. The six images here were all captured no more than 11 hours ago.
I hope to see you back here soon, but I am really having to get prepared for a themed portrait shoot that is happening here at the studio on Friday. I’ve got to get in the right mindset for that since I’ll be working with only about two hours of available light outside and I have a long list of shots that I want to get. I probably shouldn’t have gone out today, and in all honesty wasn’t planning on it. However, when I see the weather conditions looking favorable for the first time all season, I really had no choice but to jump on it. I remember well missing out on an entire Fall season because I was focusing on portrait shoots. I didn’t want that to happen again, and as long as I keep putting my paying clients first, I don’t think I should have to give up good landscape photography days like this one was.
Until next time….
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