Storms Coming to Rich Valley

I spent last Sunday taking photos around Smyth County Virginia.   My first stop was the Visitor's Center in Chilhowie to get some suggestions for places to shoot.   The folks there were very helpful, giving me enough ideas to last for days.  One suggestion was the Rich Valley Overlook on northern boarder of Hungry Mother State Park.  This is not a marked spot and is easily missed.  In fact I drove about a mile down the other side of the mountain before I found a place to turn around and head back up to the top where there was the only pull off I saw for miles.   You couldn't see the valley from the pull off so I was standing on the edge of the road against the guard rail hoping a car didn't come by and send me and my gear over the edge.

It had been thundering for a while and I knew from the weather map on my phone that an afternoon thunderstorm was going to hit about the time I got to my spot.  Just before and after a storm is some of the best times to get dramatic lighting on the landscape so I knew I had to try.  I had just enough time to set up and fire off several shots before the rains hit and chased me back inside my car.   You can see the rain coming up the valley on the left side of this photo.

Be sure to click this image for a larger view

To capture the entire range of light I took bracketed shots at -2EV, 0EV and +2EV.  I used Nik HDR Efex Pro to merge them together, then a little Lightroom adjustments to lighten the trees, increase the vibrance, cut some of the noise, and add a little vignette.

Thinking Outside The Frame

We're told "thinking outside the box" is a good thing.  It opens our mind to consider new ideas beyond the way it's always been done.  What about when we edit our digital photos?   What's the box that might constrain our thinking when we are using Photoshop, Lightroom, or Picasa?   The cropping feature that is built into these tools can tend to keep us within the standards for picture frames.

If you go to any store that sells ready made frames you'll find they are sized to hold 4x6, 5x7, 8x10 prints.   The crop tool in our editing packages often defaults to these standard sizes.   That's fine if you plan on printing your photo and using a standard frame.   Most of us don't print many of our photos any more.  They end up on a website somewhere.   Yet, we tend to use the standard crop sizes.   If the photos are going on a website they can be cropped to any width and height that works best for the photo.

Here's an example.   The first photo is not cropped at all.  This is the way I took it.

Uncropped

The next two are cropped to 8x10 and 5x7

8x10

5x7

None of these really work for me.   There is too much wasted space at the bottom and top of the photo.  This does not add anything to the photo and a good rule of thumb is to eliminate anything that doesn't add to the composition.

Here's the crop I like best.



Unconstrained Crop

 I turned off the crop lock in Lightroom and cropped according to what I thought looked best, without considering the dimensions.

If I was to print this I would have to go back and find a crop that either fits a standard size print/frame or go for a custom photo mat and/or frame.   In this case it's pretty close to a 10x20, which is a size that I can get printed.   If you're looking for a frame for a 10x20 print you may have to go somewhere besides Walmart and Hobby Lobby.   Better yet, forget the frame and print as a canvas wrap.   I've done three of those now and love them.

This photo is available for purchase online.  It's ready to print at 4x8, 5x10, 8x16, 10x20, or 12x24.   Many of these sizes are available as metal or canvas prints.

Photo/Travel Program - The Parks of The Sierra Nevada Mountains

Now, a word from the Shameless Self Promotion Department at The Siggins Photography.

The 63rd Annual Virginia Highlands Festival kicks off this Saturday July 23 and runs through August 7.   The festival began in 1949 by Robert Porterfield, founder of the Barter Theater, as a simple one-week festival to showcase Appalachian arts and crafts. Since then the festival has now grown into a two-week event offering a variety of venues.

View from Moro Rock, Sequoia National Park

This year I'll be presenting a program at the festival on The Parks of The Sierra Nevada Mountains on August 6.   I'll be showing some of my photography and talking about Sequoia, Kings Canyon and Yosemite National Parks.  I'll also take the audience to Bodie California to experience a real gold rush ghost town and to Mono Lake for out of this world landscapes and sunsets.   The Virginia Highlands guide lists my program as four hours long, which is not right.  I don't think I can talk near that long and no one would stay that long.   Instead it will be between 2 and 3 hours depending on how much discussion we get into.

The program (I don't like the word lecture) is part travel show and part photography program.  I'll talk about the places we visited and also about how I took different photos, the gear I used, etc.

The festival charges $5 for the program.  You can buy tickets online here.  It will be in the Executive Auditorium at the Southwest Virginia Higher Education Center, in Abingdon.

There are two other programs that are worth going to.  Chris Duncan is presenting Around the World in 180 minutes on Saturday, July 30 and National Geographic Photographer Bob Krist is presenting Behind the Scenes: Real Life Misadventures of a National Geographic Photographer Saturday July 23, 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m in the Grand Hall of the Southwest Virginia Higher Education Center.

Smoky Mountains, Blue Ridge Parkway and Other Recent Work

I've added a new Recent Work gallery to my website that contains all the photos posted in the last two months.  As I post newer photos the older ones will drop off but will still be in their proper galleries.  For example, you will find the latest photos from Smoky Mountains, Wildflowers, and Charleston / Hilton Head galleries also in the Recent Work gallery.

Mossy Stream

Take a look in the Recent Work Gallery for some of the photos from my trip to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park on July 4.  I'm very happy with some of these and hope you enjoy them.

Leather Vasevine

Until this last weekend I had convinced myself that by July the wildflower season was over and there was not much to shoot until fall.  Boy, was I wrong.  We saw Fire Pink, Bee Balm, Cone Flowers, Columbine, Fly Poison, Rhododendrons, Mountain Laurel, and others.   Of course, there was plenty of ferns and moss covered rocks in the streams.   Just goes to show we are blessed all the time, even if we don't know it.   Sometimes all we have to do is open our eyes and look around at God's Glorious Creations.

Fire Pink

Many thanks to my friend and fellow photographer Harold Ross for taking me to all these great places and helping me learn some new wildflowers.

What I get up at 3:00 AM for....

At 3:00 AM on July 4 I got up.   Why in the world would anyone get up that early on a holiday?  Sane normal people would be enjoying a day off from work and sleeping in.   This Forth of July I got up, ate a quick breakfast, gathered my camera gear and drove to meet Harold Ross.  The two of us drove to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park to be there at 6:15 for this.

Sunrise from Newfound Gap Road, NC

I'd say it was worth missing a few hours sleep to capture a dawn of a new day in the mountains.

We spent the rest of the day driving around the park and the Blue Ridge Parkway shooting streams, waterfalls, and wildflowers.   I enjoyed spending the day with a great Christian and photographer.   I'll post a few more photos from the day soon.

Do You Feel Persecuted?

Many churches today are persecuted in one way or another for many different reasons.   The Prince William's Parish Church, or the Sheldon Church as it is known today, has seen extreme persecution in it's 266 year history.  The church is located between the towns of Beaufort and Yemassee in South Carolina.  It was built between 1745 and 1753 and funded by William Bull, who was the Lieutenant Governor of South Carolina.  Bull died before the church was even completed and was buried at the base of the altar inside the church.  His grave is there, inside the old walls.

William Bull's Grave

During the Revolutionary War, the church was set on fire when British General Augustine Prevost invaded the area in 1779.  In 1826, the church was rebuilt using the surviving walls of the original structure.  On January 14, 1865, the church was burned a second time when it was set on fire by Sherman's troops during his "March to the Sea'' campaign.   It was never rebuilt.

I have done a little internet research to try and understand why churches were burned during the wars.  One site claimed gunpowder was stored in the church during the Civil War.  Another claimed the British associated some churches with American revolutionaries.   I never did find anything definitive. 

Today the wall and front columns are still standing surrounded by beautiful Live Oaks and Dogwoods.   There are a few graves around the church dating back to the early 1700's.

Some of the oldest graves

Old Sheldon Church

We got to the church not long after sunrise to take advantage of the soft, warm early morning light.   Before the sun was high enough to shine on the church itself, the indirect light made the church ruins glow like there was a light on inside.   It was a bit hazy early in the morning, which made the skies white or grey.   I've intentionally cropped the photos to remove as much of the sky as possible.

After spending some quality time with South Carolina's finest mosquitoes, we were getting ready to leave when the sun got just high enough to shine through the tree leaves.   I took advantage of this to capture a "sun burst" above the church.   To get this effect you need to shoot with a small aperture (I used f/25 here) and position the camera so the sun is partially blocked, creating a pinpoint light source. 

I hope you enjoy these photos.  These and others are available for purchase in the Sheldon Church Gallery

Hilton Head Sunrise

Here I am on vacation getting very little sleep.  Seems when I'm on vacation I'll get up after 4 hours sleep and head out in hopes of a good sunrise.   This time we're in Hilton Head, SC staying a short walk from the beach.   After staying up to almost 1:00 I got up at 5:15 AM and walked down to the beach.   The thing about photographing sunrises is you never know what you'll get.   Sometimes I get there and the sunrise is a dud, like my recent Roan Mountain sunrise hike.   Other times I'm blessed with a beautiful dawn.

This morning I got there long before the sun.   There were very few people out that early.   By the time the sun came up there were dozens of people walking, running or walking their dogs on the beach.   It was low tide and there was probably 200' of beach.  Later today when the tide comes in there will only be about 30' of beach with people everywhere.   Early morning is the time to be on the beach on the Eastern shore.

Hilton Head Sunrise

This photo is available for purchase here


This was taken with a 17-50mm lens @ 33mm then cropped down to a wide landscape.  I used a small f/16 aperture to maximize my depth of field and manually focused on the grass in the foreground.   I also used a 2-stop and a 3-stop graduated neutral density filter stacked together to keep from blowing out the sky.   I still had to darken the sky some in Lightroom.  It's tough shooting into the sun and still being able to see the details in the darker areas of the image.

I also had to adjust the white balance.  The camera was on auto white balance and because the sky was so orange it compensated by making the photo more blue.   The sand had a distinct blue tint to it before adjusting.

Because we're on an island we also have the opportunity to shoot some sunsets as well.   I'll try a couple sunsets before the weeks is out.