Wait For It

This weekend we "Fall Back" and starting Sunday morning, sunrise will be an hour earlier than this week.  June suggested we take advantage of this last week and go see a sunrise somewhere.  We decided on Wednesday afternoon to take off the next day and go to the Smokies for a day trip.  Being retired is nice that way.

It's a good idea to plan to be to the sunrise spot 30 minutes before the sunrise, which meant we had to be at the Oconaluftee Valley Overlook by 7:20.  Even with the late sunrise, we had to get up at 4 AM, eat a quick breakfast and head on down the road. The thing about sunrises is you never know what you will get when you start out.  But if you don't get up and go, you'll never get a great sunrise photo.

The Oconaluftee Valley Overlook is on the Newfound Gap Highway just south of the Newfound Gap parking area.  It's a great spot for sunrise and we found several other photographers already there when we arrived a little after 7.  As the sky started to lighten, we were disappointed to see solid clouds in all directions, from horizon to horizon.

7:35 AM

By 7:35 it really looked like we should have stayed in bed.  The sun was to come up in 15 minutes just about in the V in the mountains.  We decided to stick it out.

Right at sunrise, there was a small break in the clouds off to the south.  We could see through that small opening a little of what was happening on the other side of the clouds.

7:52 AM

That was pretty much all we saw for a while, then the clouds started to break up off to the east where the sun was hiding.  At 15 minutes after sunrise, the sun was well above the horizon by this time, but things were starting to happen.

8:07 AM

 Then it happened!  The clouds parted and the sun broke through 20 minutes after sunrise.

8:10 AM

If we had given up and headed off to find other places to shoot, we would have missed one of the best sunrises we've seen this year.  We didn't get to see the Elk at the Oconaluftee Visitor Center this trip, but we saw God's Glory in the sunrise.

8:12 AM

Sunrises and sunsets are photographer's favorites.  The drama of the of brilliant warm colors in the clouds and God beams shining down on the landscape is hard to beat.  The skies don't always cooperate and we might think it's not worth going or waiting around.  Other times we might be tempted to leave right after the sunrise or sunset. Many times I will have my tripod still set up while I watch other photographers pack up and leave. My experience says wait and see what is in store.  Don't give into temptation and leave early.  Sometimes the best part is 15 - 30 minutes after sunset, or in this case, after sunrise.

It's Important To Plan Ahead

On a recent two week trip, I ran into a problem with the memory cards I use in my camera.  The problem was I made too many photos and ran out of cards!  That shouldn't be a problem.  SD cards are available in Target, Walmart, and most any store that sells electronics.  My problem was I was in the town of Munising Michigan.  Munising is a city of fewer than 3,000 people on the southern shore of Lake Superior on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. This is the best place to go to see Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore.  It's not the best place to find an SD card.

Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore

The best option we found was a Dollar Store that said they had good SD cards.  When we got there we found they were

micro-SD cards for a smartphone.  Low capacity, slow, and expensive.  Then we learned that Munising had something that few other places have -- a Radio Shack store.  Really!  They are not all gone.  We did have a hard time finding this one because it was in the back corner of a local pharmacy. Once we found them I bought the best card they had in the store - a SanDisk 64GB XC I card. Now I'm back in business and heading down the road to the next beautiful photo destination with my new card.

I soon learned why getting the right card for your camera is so important.  My Fuji X-T2 camera makes really large photos really fast.  When I got the camera I did a little research and found the Transcend Ultimate UHS-II SDHC U3 was a good match for my camera.  That's what I have been using since I got the camera.  I now know how important a fast card is.

Shooting Fast on Lake Michigan

The Radio Shack SDXC card has a write speed of 4 MB per second. My Transcend cards have a write speed of 180 MB per second, 45 times faster!  But, what does this mean in the real world?

Most of the time I make five different exposures of the same shot, starting at - 2 EV and going to +2 EV.  When I get home I then either pick the best exposure out of the five or blend some combination of the five together on the PC.  The Fuji camera can make those 5 shots in less than a second and write them to the card in the time it takes me to take a breath.  That is if I have a high-speed card in the camera.  What I found was what appears instantaneous with a high-speed card takes about a minute with the low-speed card.  I would take the five shots then wait a minute while the camera saved those photos to the card.  That's a pretty frustrating experience. 

When shopping for memory cards for your camera I suggest doing a little research first.  Find out what the manufacturer recommends.  Then see if there is any additional information available online. I also found a few good sites with information that helped me decide which cards to buy. 

Camera Memory Speed - Performance Tests for Digital Cameras
https://www.cameramemoryspeed.com/

Fuji X-T2
https://alikgriffin.com/fastest-memory-cards-for-the-fujifilm-x-t2/

Canon DSLRs
https://www.forthebecause.com/canon-5d-mark-iii-memory-write-speeds/

All my troubles could have been avoided if I had planned ahead and brought enough memory cards with me.  I've since solved that problem and am ready for the next big adventure.

A Journey's Beginning - West Virginia

“Once you have traveled, the voyage never ends, but is played out over and over again in the quietest chambers. The mind can never break off from the journey.”
― Pat Conroy

In the last week of September, we started out on a journey north.  We didn't have a destination as much as we had a path.  Our path took us through Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky and back to Kingsport Tennessee.  We had a list of places to stop along the way and enough time to stop at the unexpected roadside scenes. I'm replaying our journey in several blog posts over the next couple of weeks. I'll share photos from our trip and at least one thing I learned along the way.

We used a new app called Roadtrippers to plan this trip.  There is a website and mobile apps to help the traveler find interesting places to see along the way.  You start at a location and add a destination.  You can visually find and add things to the trip along the map creates.  We found several of our planned stops along the 2,428-mile route.  You can see our planned trip here.  We didn't hit all the sites along the way and added some using the mobile app.  The Roadtrippers app is useful for planning a trip and you will definitely find more than you could ever do along the way.  It relies on people providing reviews of the different points of interest and suffers from a lack of reviews.  If it lasts and gets more users/reviews then it can be a very useful tool.

Bush Creek Falls

Our first stop on our first day was an unplanned trip down a narrow winding road to Bush Creek Falls in West Virginia, which June found using the Roadtrippers app.  This was a nice find and we will go back in the spring when there is more water going over the falls.

On our first day out I learned that you can't trust websites that predict fall color.  According to the experts, the West Virginia hillsides should have been ablaze with reds, yellows, and oranges. What we saw was either more green or brown drought-stricken leaves on the ground.  We thought the leaf colors would be past peak as we moved further north but we mostly found only patches of call color.

Above Pipestem Lodge. Photo by June

Above The Bluestone River Gorge

We made a stop at Pipestem State Park and hiked out to a rock outcrop to gaze down into the gorge.  With no fall color, the most interesting photo was of June's hiking pole hanging on an old tree at the edge.

One of the most photographed spots in West Virginia is the Glade Creek Grist Mill at Babcock State Park. The mill sits above some large rock slabs where Glade Creek cascades over to create beautiful waterfalls below the mill.  This year has been dry all over the East and there was very little water flowing just on one side of the rocks.

Glade Creek Grist Mill

Glade Creek

When nature doesn't provide grand waterfalls to photograph, the photographer must look closer to find subjects of interest. Sometimes it might require artistic rearranging of leaves.

While I was climbing around the rocks looking for waterfall photos, June was making beautiful photos of flowers and bees.

Photo by June

Reflections on Boley Lake

Less than a mile upstream from the Mill is a small man-made lake.  We did find a little fall color here.  Thinking we will see a lot of trees with fall colors later on in our trip, I choose to photograph the reflections of the trees instead of the trees themselves.

We also stopped at the New River Bridge and the caught a disappointing sunset when we crossed the Ohio River at Ravenswood, WV.  Ravenswood sits on land once owned by George Washington and the town streets and lots were laid out in their current pattern by descendants of George Washington in 1835. By this time we were running late and needed to get moving along down the road.

The next day we spent several hours exploring Hocking Hills State Park on the way to Michigan to visit our son and daughter-in-law. More about that park in the next installment of our travels.

“Not I, nor anyone else can travel that road for you.
You must travel it by yourself.
It is not far. It is within reach.
Perhaps you have been on it since you were born, and did not know.
Perhaps it is everywhere - on water and land.”
― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

Finding Art

I had an early appointment in downtown Kingsport this morning and thought about heading up to Bays Mountain to make some photos of fall foliage. The morning skies were clear and bright, which is not great light for landscape photos so I decided to skip the park.  As I was driving through town I came across this massive mountain of ladders on the lawn of the Kingsport Renaissance Center.

I had my camera in the car and couldn't resist stopping.  This massive collection of ladders, all tied together at multiple heights and angles is a community art project called Rise Together Kingsport.  What I found is a sculpture celebrating the combined hopes and dreams that are the community of Kingsport.  It is a project by the City of Kingsport Office of Cultural Arts, the Tennessee Arts Commission and artist Charlie Brouwer. The project provides an opportunity for anyone in the community to participate in creating a sculpture signifying the combined hopes and dreams that depend on, build upon and support each other in Kingsport.  People and organizations came together to loan or donate ladders.  Some were obviously used, others were made just for this purpose.  There were really long extension ladders, step ladders, stools, and even ladders made of cloth and pipe cleaners.

Photographing this sculpture was a little challenging.  First, it is BIG, stretching across the lawn and a couple stories high.  Second, it appears to be very random with no central point to capture a viewers interest.  Photos of the entire web of ladders can show the massive size, but don't give the viewer a point of interest to focus on.

At first, I shot up from what is more or less the center, trying to capture the height.

I also tried playing with the sunlight.  Bright contrasty sunlight is not good for landscape photography but it can help a subject that is made up of high contrast elements.

As I walked around within the sculpture, I found individual pieces of art donated by the community. 

Musical

I was talking with one of the ladder donors while I was there.  He showed me the ladder he made, what he called "An Asian Kingsport Ladder". It was made of bamboo grown in Colonial Heights and boards broken by his daughter in her Tae Kwon Do class. He compared it to another bamboo ladder made by a friend that was similar, yet unique pieces of art.

DB HIgh School Art & Design Classes

It is these details that help tell the story behind the sculpture.  In fact, there are many stories from the community hidden in the apparent randomness.  I wonder what the story is behind the ladder made of walking canes or the multi-colored fabric.

Walking Canes Reaching Higher

Community Climbing Ladders

Someone had taken time to create a string of pipe cleaner people that snaked in and through the entire mountain of ladders.

Inspire, Believe, Celebrate!

A Ladder of Colors

As photographers, we are storytellers. Our photos need to help people understand and want to know more about the subject in our photos.  Sometimes we need to get up close to find the stories hidden right in front of us.

Time To Vote On 2018 Calendar Photos

Dry Falls North Carolina

It's Past Time...

As I have done for several years, I will be selling a  2018 Wall Calendar to raise money for Hope Haven Ministries.  Due to some recent travels, I am already behind schedule and will need to work quickly to get the calendars out in time for Christmas.

Will This One Make The Cut?

I still cannot pick the photos to go on the calendar and will rely on you to help me. I am in the process of picking candidate photos to be voted on by you.  I'll let you know when the voting starts. For now, please consider ordering one or more 2018 calendars. I'll be happy to ship calendars again this year.

All the profit will go to Hope Haven Ministries, Christian based homeless shelters in Kingsport.  I'm currently working with the printer to minimize costs and hopefully keep the same low low price of $15 each.

Something Different From The Solar Eclipse

Like millions of others, June and I took a couple days and traveled to watch and hopefully photograph the total solar eclipse on August 20. By now you've seen dozens of photos from that day and they all pretty much look the same. Here's my story and some different photos from Total Solar Eclipse Day.

I planned for a couple months leading up to the eclipse day.   I picked my location and booked one of the last hotel rooms in Townsend Tennessee months before.  I wanted to be close so we could get there early to claim our spot.  I ordered eclipse

Eclipse Glasses for $20 Each

glasses and a solar filter for my camera.  I even wrote a 10-page document with details on times, locations, angles of the sun, camera settings, diagrams, etc.  I consulted with Kent Ervin, one of the best photographers I know, comparing plans, etc. I was ready.

The Tree

June and I spent the day before Eclipse Day in the Smokies, including some time under "The Tree" in Cades Cove where I planned on making my photos.

On the big day, we got up and left our hotel around 6 AM, more than seven hours before the start of the eclipse.  At 6:30, two miles from the entrance to Cades Cove we found ourselves in a line of cars with license plate from all over the east.

6:30 AM

We were there in line for almost 2 hours. I don't know but wouldn't be surprised if that line of cars went all the way back to Townsend. Everyone was excited and in a good mood. We met some nice people and I got to photograph a cool mushroom while we waited.

7:20 AM

Cable Mill Area by June

The Park Service finally opened the gate a little after 8 AM and we were soon in The Cove slowly following a line of cars around the loop.  As planned we took Hyatt Lane across to the other side to get to our spot and set up.

I really had no idea how many people would want to watch or photograph from our spot.  We saw very few cars go by while we waited.  Where were all the cars?  Knowing that we would be waiting for most of a day I brought our bikes.  I rode to the Cable Mill for a bathroom break and found the cars.  It was a difficult ride because the cars were moving too slow for me to ride my bike and much of the time I was standing still waiting on the line of cars or walking my bike.

360 Degree Pano of Our Spot by June

Turns out few people made it past the mill.  There were hundreds of cars and thousands of people at the Cable Mill area. Other than another photographer and a young couple we had the Oak tree to ourselves.

That old Oak is the most photographed tree in the park.  Try Googling "The Tree Cades Cove" and you will see hundreds of photos.  Like all photographers who visit the park, I've also photographed The Tree many times but never gotten up under it.  We were there for the shade and hopefully to include part of The Tree in eclipse photos.  What we found was a wealth of photos waiting to be made.  These are some of my "bonus shots" I found while waiting under The Tree.

There were many song birds among the branches of the Oak tree and in the grasses of the recently mowed field.  We were there for several hours, giving me many opportunities to photograph them.

Goldfinch

Eastern Kingbird

Bluebird

Song Sparrow

Indian Paintbrush and Coneflower

The birds were in their subdued summer colors.  The flower and grasses, however, were in their glory.

Dew on Grass

Queen Anne's Lace

Goldenrod

The one thing I couldn't plan was the weather, but by the time the eclipse started we had mostly clear blue skies with only a few clouds.  However, not all my photography plans worked out.  I gave up on the shot with the tree and the sun and put that camera up.  I did take close up photos of the sun every 10 minutes to use to create a composite of the different phases.

Sunspots

My Composite

All my planning didn't prepare me for the actual totality event.  When it happened, it got dark very fast and I got excited.  I needed to change camera settings and it was dark enough that I had a hard time seeing the dials on my camera.  The exposures weren't working out anything like I planned and I didn't realize until it was over that in the excitement of the two minutes of totality I forgot to remove the solar filter from my lens!  I didn't get the cool totality shots that everyone else got, but I am happy with what I did get.

Although the totality only lasted 2 minutes where we were, it was worth everything we put into it. I'm planning to go to the next one on April 8, 2024.  Less than 7 years away!  I wonder if I will find a spot with birds, flowers, and an old Oak tree...