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.

Keep shooting.



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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.

Keep shooting.


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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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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.

Keep shooting.


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