Saturday, July 16, 2022
As I start typing this little “dear diary” entry it occurs to me that 12 hours ago I was waking up to get started on this short trek which was planned in just a few hours the night before. It just happened to be this morning that reminded me of why I enjoy the winter months when it comes to photography. I have never been a morning person and really don’t like getting up early, but when it comes to photography, and landscape photography in specific, light is king, and you have to be ready when the light is good. So, when exactly is the light good? Well, the general consensus is the light is best during the golden hours around sunrise and sunset. I only loosely agree with that as I think that good light can be found any time during the day. However, one consideration that does support the theory is that in order to get interesting colors in the sky, the blue hour and golden hour are the best bets.
That was kind of what I was after for this particular trek. It had been a while since I had gone out for a good sunrise or sunset when I was expecting a lot of color. When I went to Thunder Hill the last time, there wasn’t much hope for color because the clouds were low, but I still got out there early to take full advantage of the soft light of dawn. I really enjoyed myself on that trek and came back with some pretty good images I thought. It did kind of get me in the mood to get some vibrant colors in the sky as I honestly can’t remember the last time I was able to do that. Wanting color in the sky left me with two options. I could shoot at either sunrise or sunset. I’m just not a fan of doing sunset photos along the Blue Ridge Parkway because everybody and their brother is out there. The crowds keep me from really enjoying myself, so I tend to shy away from popular times at places. That left me with only sunrise to choose from. That is my favorite time to do landscape photography because so few people want to wake up that early and get out in time to really enjoy the event. Unfortunately though, I am also one of those people that doesn’t like to leave the comfort of my bed until a reasonable hour.
During the winter months, that really poses no problem since sunrise can be well after 7am. However, during the summer months, sunrise comes right around 6am which isn’t terrible I suppose, but there are things to be taken into consideration. First, I have to wake up and get ready to leave. Then I have travel time to wherever I plan on being, and I want to get there early enough to possibly hike to the location and find a composition before getting the camera set up. I needed to know where I was going to be working before I could do the math to determine when I was going to need to be getting up. I started going through some of my favorite locations on my weather app to see where the clouds were going to be the best. It was actually looking like everything was pretty uniform with high clouds coming in about an hour before sunrise which was a great setup for some good color. That left the choice completely up to me.
As I was sitting in the chair pondering, I eventually came up with Rough Ridge, which is one of my favorites, but I haven’t been there in quite some time now. It is always fun to shoot a sunrise at, and it offers a lot of variation in compositions. The parking area is right at an hour away from home, and it takes about 20 minutes or so to hike up to the area that I like to work from. In order to give myself time to capture the first of the good light, I wanted to be on deck about 45 minutes before sunrise which was scheduled for 6:24. I did a little bit of math in my head, carried the one, and realized that I was going to need to be in the parking lot by 5:15, which meant that I was going to have to leave the house no later than 4:15. In order to get breakfast down and get myself dressed, I was going to be getting up at 3:30. Well, that is an ugly realization to be made at about 8:00pm the night before.
I went over the plans in my head for a couple of hours before I went to sleep and worked on an alternate location as well. There was a good chance that the clouds weren’t going to be in my favor for sunrise at Rough Ridge, so I needed to get something else in place in case I had fewer clouds to work with. I really had no idea what to choose and I stared into space thinking about the different locations, I found myself looking at one of my favorite photographs on the wall that happens to be a panorama of Beacon Heights which was shot at sunset. Hmm, that posed an interesting idea for a trek. I started to consider what direction the sun would be rising in in relation to the mountain. This was important because I wanted to get side light from the opposite side for a different look. Since this was going to be my backup plan for a clear-ish sky, the position of the sun was vitally important. As I plotted things out, I realized that the sun was going to be providing mostly front light which wasn’t desirable for my idea. It was still a good alternate location though and since it was getting late, I needed to go ahead and cement that plan and call it a day.
When my alarm rang at 3:30, Toni had to wake me up because I didn’t even hear the dang thing going off. I turned it off and tried to think of why in the world I was waking up at 3:30 on a Saturday morning. Oh yeah, I wanted to get a sunrise trek in. It wasn’t anything important, so I rolled over and started to go back to sleep, but instead I looked at the weather real quickly. The clouds had been pushed back by a couple of hours and it was looking like I would have no clouds at all during sunrise. That really wasn’t what I wanted to see and it tempted me to just stay in bed. However, there is a lot of truth to the idea that you miss 100% of the shots that you aren’t present for. If I stayed in bed, I was guaranteed to not capture anything good at all. If I at least got up and tried, I might be able to get something good even if the weather didn’t cooperate. Fine, I’ll get up and go….but I don’t have to like it.
I muddled through my morning and managed to leave just after 4am which put me in a good place to get the sunrise should one happen. I made the trip out to the Blue Ridge Parkway watching the sky the entire way out there. I could see the stars which told me that there were no clouds as of yet. If that was going to be the case, Rough Ridge would be a very boring location to be. If I opted for my alternate, the sunlight would hit the mountain pretty evenly and give me an equally boring image. However, as I pondered my options, I realized that with the sun coming up roughly behind me, I might be able to get a nice alpen glow in the sky. I had photographed this several times from Rough Ridge pointing towards Beacon Heights but had never tried it from Beacon Heights. It wasn’t quite the color that I was after, but it was a viable option considering that the sky was looking pretty bare currently.
I started to get my mind wrapped around that concept as I drove down the Parkway. I planned on stopping at Rough Ridge to check the conditions before making a final choice. When I got there, I got out of the truck and looked all around in the sky. The only clouds that I saw were out towards Beacon Heights. I had plenty of time to get to either shooting location, so I just had to make a choice. Feeling that the clouds were not really going to materialize, I opted for the alpen glow scenario of Beacon Heights. That was another few miles down the Parkway which didn’t take long at all. When I got there, the sky was still pretty clear, but I grabbed my gear anyway and started up the short trail.
When I got to the summit, I chose the right-side overlook which was my favorite for the view of the mountain. I was the only person up there which was perfect. I walked around for a bit to find the best angle for the photograph. I was suspecting that I was going to shoot a panorama because this view just about requires that orientation to really show it off. I had shot this panorama several times and knew pretty much what I was going to need to have in place to get it done. I got the tripod leveled up and mounted my 70-200mm lens which was my best option for the series of frames that I would be capturing. It was still mostly dark, so I wasn’t able to start capturing any photographs just yet, but I was able to get the composition figured out and the focus set. As I waited for the light to appear, I was noticing that there were some great low clouds in the valleys below. It was still blue hour at this point, and I was thinking that might be my only chance for a good image. I changed up everything that I had just dialed into the camera and trained it in on this small section of mountains in the distance. There was no need for any filters, so I just got the composition and set the exposure for what I needed. I shot five frames with slightly different compositions and felt that I had a good mix to choose from.
The light was starting to build so I aimed the camera back at the starting point of the planned panorama series and got ready to fire off what was going to be about 8 frames if my estimate was correct. As the sun came close to the horizon to the rear, I could see a bank of clouds moving into the right of the scene which was going to provide some chance of color, but it was also going to probably mess up any alpen glow that might happen. I just went with it and tried to make the best of what I had. The sky was taking on a really nice purple hue which looked really good. I started making passes with the camera and realized that the mountain was rather boring as there was no light on it at all. These were passable images, but I was really hoping that I could do better than a shadowed mountain under a dark sky.
I think I shot six full panoramic series which turned out to be 10 frames a piece. My shot count was rising very quickly as it tends to do when shooting panoramas. I wasn’t wild about any of the shots though because I was really wanting to get some light on the mountains in the scene. When I saw the light hit the main feature in front of me, I had to make a quick decision. I could keep with the panoramic series, but the dim light would get lost in the overall scene. I wanted to feature that light specifically in a photograph, so I once again abandoned my panoramic setup and tried to work out a single frame composition showcasing the light. Everything that I did was very flat and had not depth to it. I needed more foreground which meant that I was needing to go wider than 70mm. I swapped out my lens for my 24-70mm which I added a filter holder to. I found a great composition without moving the tripod at 41mm. I was using a bit of the rocky surface I was standing on as a foreground that led into the top of a shaded tree. All of this transitioned into the sun kissed trees leading up to the tobacco-colored sky. I started to make exposures here and realized that there was a bank of clouds rolling in from the valley to the right and adding some nice sculpting to the side of the mountain. I worked with that line of clouds for a bit until it faded away enough for me not to worry about it any more. I swapped out my lens once again for the 70-200mm and stored the filter away.
The light was looking really good over the entire scene at this point. There was no alpen glow, but I was actually much happier with the clouds picking up the color of the sun behind me. The intensity of the colors changed from time to time, but overall it was a pretty steady hue that I was able to deal with. I wasn’t sure what the sunrise was looking like over Rough Ridge, but I was really happy with what I had going on in front of me. As I was setting up once again for the panorama that works so well here, I noticed that the shape of the clouds above started to mimic the shape of the mountain in a mirror image. This reminded me of that favorite panorama that I had shot here in 2017 where the clouds seemed to line up to highlight areas of interest in the frame. With the sky still getting more color, I was all set to rattle off another several runs through the 10 frames that would make my final image.
As the light built, there was some subtle directionality to it which I really loved. It was the shadows that were most important to the sculpting of the mountain. The brighter the sun got, the better that contrast became. I shot another four full runs through the scene until the light started to fade and lose the color that I was after. By the end of this, I had shot a total of ten panoramas that each consisted of ten frames. What you see right above is the next to last capture and the one image out of 100 frames that escaped the trash bin. Just this one image would have made the morning worth it, but surprisingly enough, it wasn’t even my favorite of the morning. The single frame photo that I had done in the middle of all of the panoramas was my favorite from this location. It had all those great qualities that I wanted out of the scene, but I managed to capture it much more successfully than I had done in 2017. Both times these single image captures were afterthoughts in the grand scheme of things and usually those turn out looking just like an afterthought. This example has a polished look that really looks like I considered the entire photograph and carefully planned it out. I certainly can’t complain about how it all came together and I’m very thankful that I chose this location over Rough Ridge.
As I was packing up and getting ready to make the quick hike back down the trail, I ran into a couple hiking out to the area that I had just been. One of them was holding a Slik tripod so I knew what he was there for. He asked me if I was looking for a sunrise to which I responded the sunrise had already left the scene. He informed me that where I had been, was actually a good sunset location and I was able to confirm that. He had been on the other side shooting the sunrise towards the sun and was telling me how the sun came out bare and wasn’t all that impressive. I immediately felt even better about my unorthodox choice to shoot a sunrise in almost the entire opposite direction from the sun. I had seen great color in the sky as well as semi-directional light on the mountain. It had all come together and since I had gotten up, I was there to capture it. It just doesn’t get better than that.
On the way down the trail, I thought about my other options for different locations. Toni and I had dinner plans with friends, so I wasn’t going to be able to stay out too much longer, but I had time to get another location shot. Looking at the clouds it was probably not going to be a landscape location though. As the forecast had called for, the high clouds were rolling in pretty quick at this point and the light was getting a little too flat for landscape work. It was perfect for rural and decay photography though.
I knew that there was another little barn in the area of Aho Gap that I had tried to photograph about a week ago when I was in the area. The rain and lighting prevented me from photographing it, but the conditions appeared much better this time. It wasn’t too far down the road, so I set my course back to that area and found the barn. I pulled off on the side of the road and looked at the scene. What I couldn’t see the last time was the row of houses behind it at the top of the hill. I didn’t want to include the houses because they didn’t help the old barn at all. Without having the sky included, which was my only option to avoid the houses, I had no interest in the composition. I was going to need fog for this one, and I certainly didn’t have it this time. I just kept on driving and looked at another couple of barns that had interested me the last time out there. None of them were going to work with the current weather conditions so I worked my way back to Old 421 so I could head home.
As I was driving through Deep Gap, I saw an old red barn on a side road that I had wanted to photograph for years. The problem was this barn was right in the middle of a very busy group of houses and barns. There were also about eight power lines that were strung across the frame that I didn’t care for. It was situated right on the side of the road, and I just hadn’t been able to figure out a composition for it in several years of seeing it. Since I had the time and had only shot one location (granted it was 121 frames), I decided to give it a try. I pulled down onto the secondary road for maybe the third time as I tried to figure out a composition. I saw more problems than solutions with this subject, but something in my head told me to stick with it and figure it out. I pulled into a parking lot where there was some construction equipment, so I wasn’t in traffic while I pondered the composition.
As I was looking at the barn, I realized that from this angle, there was nothing except for the power lines in the background. I had breathing room to the left before a large blue tractor would enter the scene, and enough room on the right to keep out the house and the power pole behind the barn. I had never been this far away looking at a composition as I had always defaulted to shooting with a standard lens from closer. What I was seeing might just work. I would have a lot of Photoshop work to do in order to get rid of the power lines but removing them with trees in the background wouldn’t be that difficult.
I got my camera out with the 70-200mm lens attached and added a polarizer to give a little contrast to the sky. I set the rig up on the edge of the parking lot and found the best composition. I liked most of what I was seeing but the road in front of the barn was a distraction as it cut between the flowering weeds and the fence. I started to look for alternatives that would make the road easier to deal with. I lowered the camera and found that I couldn’t get it low enough to make the road disappear. The field that was in front of me was recessed slightly and would give me another two feet or so less altitude on the camera which might just do the trick. I went into the field a little bit and got the camera set up again. This time I could see that the road went completely away meaning that I wouldn’t have to do anything at all with it in post. I also removed a little bit of the compression of the image by going a bit wider compared to the 135mm I had started out at.
I shot a few more frames with this composition as the clouds moved before I was sure that I had something from this location. I didn’t want to overstay my welcome, so I went back to the truck and packed everything up. I now had 129 frames on the memory cards and was hoping for three or four good images out of all of those. Taking into account the ten panoramas that I had captured with ten frames each, I had actually shot 39 photographs for this trek so my hope for three to four would actually still be in my 10% hit rate goal. As you can see, I have four images here that I think worked out very well. I don’t do a lot of sunrise and sunset images so when I do I tend to get a little excited about them. It isn’t that I don’t like them, it is just that every landscape photographer out there thinks that this is the only time during the day that a photograph can be made, and the amount of sunrise and sunset images completely saturates the market. I always try to create images that aren’t the normal ones.
I thank you for joining me on this really early trek. As I wrap things up here in the blog, I am looking at being up for 14 hours which have been completely dedicated to working on these photos. Being a photographer is much more involved than going out and pressing a button. The capture is only the beginning, and really isn’t even considered the beginning because my photographs all start with a plan of some sort. If you appreciate the efforts that I put into my landscape and decay photography, please consider purchasing a print. All of my photographs (excluding portraiture) are available to purchase, and those print sales help me continue to go out and capture these scenes. You get to support me and my business, while getting something beautiful to look at on your wall.
Don’t forget that I have three new workshops coming up in the Fall if you would like the opportunity to pick my brain for little tidbits that might help you with your photography. I don’t know it all, but what I do know, I’m happy to share with you. I’ve got a Fall Landscape Workshop coming up in October, a Fall Decay Workshop coming up in November, and a Winter Waterfall Workshop coming up in December. There are still slots available in each of these, but I suspect that two of them will get sold out. Do you feel like risking it and waiting? Get signed up today to ensure your spot! If I don’t have a workshop that suits your needs, I’m also available through my mentorship program which can be by the hour, or you can sign up for a long-term advanced mentorship. I am currently full with my advanced mentorships, but I will have an opening in probably another six weeks or so. If this is something that you think would work for you, let’s start talking about how it will look for you, and get you on the calendar. These programs are first come first serve and because of the time that I spend with the clients, I can only have a limited number going at a time.
I’m also currently booking portrait sessions. Whether you need a new headshot, or a family portrait, I can certainly help you out. I also offer other services such as engagement sessions, creative portraiture, fashion photography, boudoir, and figure studies. I am still building a portfolio for some of these types and if you act quickly, you might be eligible for a free session, or one that is deeply discounted. Get in touch with me today so we can get you in the books and determine what exactly you are wanting out of your portrait session.
Until next time….
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