Sylva, North Carolina

Spent the weekend in Sylva, NC getting shots for an upcoming article in WNC Magazine. Sylva is a quintessential mountain town. A thriving main street shopping area with a number of interesting businesses, a variety of restaurants, and usually an old hardware store and a handful of churches.

These two images give some perspective. The first image shows the Jackson County Court House from Main Street, and the second image was taken from in front of the court house looking down Main Street.

Blue Ridge Country!

I was just thumbing through the latest issue of Blue Ridge Country and for some reason looked at the list of contributing photographers and was surprised to see my name! Lo and behold they used two of my images - one from the front porch of Moses Cone Manor on the Blue Ridge Parkway, and one from Natural Bridge in Kentucky. What a pleasant surprise - that was one of my goals for the year and I made it in June (although it is the August issue)!

Group Photo

I shot this image from behind some of my fellow CNPA-Charlotte members at sunrise on Roan Mountain. I purposely let some of the sky (ok, a lot of the sky) blow out in order to get more foreground detail. I was able to save most of the sky using a heavy curves adjustment in Lightroom. Ah, the advantages of RAW!

More Roan Mountain

Here are a few more shots from Roan Mountain. As incredible as the Rhododendron were, the Flame Azalea were equally impressive! These Azalea were up on Round Bald, just over the hill (always look behind you!) from the sunrise location in the previous post. The Rhododendron were just across the road from the parking lot (shhhhh!). I thought the fence added a particularly nice touch.

Stay tuned for more!

Roan Mountain!

Kathy and I spent this past weekend with some of our CNPA-Charlotte buddies at Roan Mountain, which is on the NC-TN border just north of Bakersville, NC. This was my first time at "The Roan" and it definitely won't be our last. What an incredible place!

Our primary objective this weekend was to shoot the incredible display of Catawba Rhododendron that Roan Mountain is famous for. But first, I had to try and capture one of the famous sunrises that I have been seeing for years. We set out at 5 am to hike up to Roan Bald, and arrived just as the color was starting to light up the sky. We were rewarded with this wonderful display as the sun rose over the horizon.

I've got a number of good shots to post over the next few days but thought I would lead with this Roan Mountain Sunrise!

Motion Blur

Kathy & I spent this past weekend at Grandfather Mountain in North Carolina for their annual Nature Photography Weekend. A good time was had by all, there was a lot of photography going on and we heard a number of inspirational speakers.

One technique that seems to be trendy these days is using motion blur to create painterly and abstract images. William Neill has been doing it for a while and I admire his work. Charles Needle was one of the presenters at Grandfather Mountain, and his presentation inspired me to give it a try.

This was my favorite blur image of the weekend. It had gotten breezy, the sunlight was coming in and out of the clouds, and I liked the parallel curves of these two tree trunks. I made this by setting the lens to an aperture of f22, throwing the trees slightly out of focus, and panning vertically for a 6-second exposure. A polarizer helped slow the shutter speed.

It's not what I usually do, but it was nice to have options when the conditions got less than ideal. And it was nice to be liberated from the tripod and try something new!