Blue Ridge Parkway Sunset, Day 2

Sunset over the Blue Ridge Mountains

Sunset on the second day up on the Blue Ridge was nice. Not spectacular, but nice. There were no clouds on the horizon to add texture and drama. There was a haze that ... well, hazed over the distance. I was having a hard time during this sunset getting a good exposure for the sky and the foreground. As you can see in this shot, the foreground went dark very quickly. The one little bit of light kissing the nearest ridge does add a hint of the ridge's texture. Again, this was an HDR blend with a little additional post-processing in Lightroom 3 for color and contrast.

All in all it was a good workshop, and I did come away with a few images that I liked.

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Sunbeams

Three Trees

After the close-up session, we waited for sunset at a particular overlook that Richard had decided to use. We were hoping for some clouds to form as the sky was very bare and uninteresting. Some clouds did form over us, but none of them made it to the western horizon for the sunset.

This image is an HDR blend I took as the sun was getting lower in the sky. The "sunbeams" are actually formed by using a very small aperture with the sun in the field of view, in this case f/22. It is also cropped just a little for compositional purposes in order to get the sunbeams coming in from the very top of the frame.

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Time for a close-up

Seed Blooms

During our workshop with Richard Bernabe, he took us a short distance into a wooded area. The point of the exercise was that during the mid-day, when the light is really harsh, is a good time to go into shaded areas to find other subjects. The area he took us too was a small area covered in ferns. While I tried to photograph the ferns, I just wasn't "feeling" it as they say. I couldn't really find a composition I liked, there was enough of a breeze through the trees to make every thing blurry. In other words, I was getting stumped. Heck, I even got stumped trying to photograph a stump.

However, I did find this one plant with these seed blooms that caught my attention. I still had a problem with the wind moving them and causing blurry shots. Then I remembered that I had my flash with me. I set my camera up in Commander mode to control the flash, and held the flash off to one side. The camera was on a tripod, there was an extension tube on the lens for macro-work, and I was using a cable release as well. Thankfully, the flash was able to freeze the seeds enough to get a nice, sharp image.

Lesson learned: A flash is a good thing to have even when photographing stuff out in the woods.


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Colorful Slope

Autumn Mountainside

As the Sun got higher in the sky, it became more difficult to get the "good light". While it was harder to get good, wide-angle landscapes, using a telephoto to zoom in on to isolate small sections seemed to work.

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Veteran's Day

Old Glory at Patriot's Point

It is Veteran's Day. Thank you to the veteran's who have served our country.


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Just After Sunrise

Blue Ridge Backlight After Sunrise

A second image taken during the Richard Bernabe workshop on the Blue Ridge Parkway. He pointed out that there might be some interesting back lighting effects, such as with the Autumn leaves in this photograph, when the sun has risen past the horizon. This helps to bring some detail into the foreground while still keeping the distant ridges in silhouette.

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Blue Ridge Sunrise, 2010

Blue Ridge Sunrise, 2010

Sunday, Oct. 10, 2010, me and a few other club members attended a photography workshop on the Blue Ridge Parkway given by Richard Bernabe. Richard is a local, professional landscape photographer who was gracious enough to give us a club discount for the session.

We met Richard before sunrise, and headed up to the Blue Ridge Parkway to meet the sun. This is one of my favorite shots from the sunrise location. I used my 70-300mm lens for the photograph rather than a wide angle as I wanted to make the sun larger in the frame and isolate some of the distant ridges.

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Blue Ridge Parkway Sunset, Day 1

Parkway Sunset

The first day of our trip to the Blue Ridge Parkway ended with a sunset session. This image is an HDR in order to get some detail in the ridges while maintaining the colors and textures in the sky.

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More Fall Colors

Waterfall and Colors

A waterfall near the Blue Ridge Parkway surrounded by seasonal Autumn colors. These falls are along a popular trail and this is one of the few frames that I got of them without people climbing over the rocks.

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Fall Colors 2010

Colors on the Blue Ridge Parkway, 2010

The weekend after I got back from the North Dakota trip, I went up to the Blue Ridge Parkway with some other members of the Spartanburg Photography Guild. We were attending a photography workshop on that Sunday, but went up the day before for some sightseeing of our own.

To be honest, there was not a lot of color in the mountains at that time. The seasonal colors were limited to particular areas. The photograph above is from one of the better areas of color we found that weekend.

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