Just returned from an amazing weekend in the Brevard, NC area chasing more fall color. Wow! The problem is knowing when to stop. I have already accepted the fact that I can’t get everything, I’m always going to miss something and that it’s not the end of the world, but geez! Color, color everywhere and no possible way to get all of it, no way to stay focused on a theme or project or any kind of plan. Just shoot what you see and figure it out later! Not exactly, but this is “going with the flow” at it’s finest.

“Only” 452 images this weekend, as compared to last week’s 628, but it rained Friday. Really, really rained, to the point that I only shot a few photos in the Grove Arcade in Asheville where we stopped to visit our friends at WNC Magazine.

Off to Cherokee this coming weekend, here’s hoping for some more amazing color and great weather. Whew!

This image is actually my last one of the day today. Playing around with motion blur and decided to try zooming the lens while pointed way up at some really tall trees with great color and a Carolina Blue sky. The location is the woods near Slickrock Falls in Pisgah National Forest.

Kathy & I spent the weekend in the Mount Airy, NC area, celebrating our 28th anniversary with more of a photography-oriented weekend than most people might do, but we were treated to a spectacular show of color. We slept in this morning after a great meal and wine last night at Chateau Morrisette, and almost wrote today off when we awoke to a severe-clear blue sky day. We were of a mindset to check out some locations for a future trip and head home early, but kept coming across these scenes that were irresistible. The light was so beautiful this afternoon that we stayed on the Parkway until sunset, which we never do on a Sunday!

This photo was one of a number from this afternoon. This was taken from the Blue Ridge Parkway near MP 236 and overlooks a pastoral valley near Sparta, NC. The late afternoon sun was really bringing out the textures in the land and the colors in the trees.

I have over 600 new images from this weekend, and I will try to post more as I process them in the days to come. But we’re off to Brevard, NC this coming weekend to chase more color and hopefully visit some waterfalls.

Kathy & I spent the weekend in West Jefferson, NC shooting an assignment for WNC Magazine.  We took the long way home and spent some time at New River State Park, where I took a little time to try out some motion blur on a stand of trees that had a little color in them.  It’s a little early for fall color here, at least in all but the higher elevations.  We’re expecting things to peek in about 2 weeks. 

I’ve spent most of this weekend at the computer and am starting to make a dent. I added a bunch of images to my website, including a section called “Experiments” with a couple of new galleries. I got the idea of doing some “mini-projects” and did a couple of them on our NC Coast trip. These two galleries are images of sand patterns and wave motion blurs. I think they’ll make nice prints but need to figure out a way to present them. That’s another item on the to-do list!

The hurrier I go the behinder I get, my grandma used to say. Just this weekend I was able to start digging into the 1400+ images from our trip to the NC coast. I haven’t found any “portfolio” images yet but I feel they will appear as I go back and listen to some of them.

This image is one of a number of shots I took of this drift fence, what we used to call snow fences up north, along Highway 12 on Ocracoke Island. The late afternoon sun was casting some nice shadows and the sky was nice and blue with some nice wispy clouds.

Some may suggest that I need to take out the power lines in the upper left, and I suppose if I make this into a print I would do that. For now we’ll stick with reality.

We had been anxiously awaiting our return to Ocracoke Island, having only been there for part of a day back in 2005. Our memory of the place as being a photo-rich environment was quite accurate, as I filled a couple of 4 Gig cards during our stay. I had been hoping to get a different-than-the-picture-postcard shot of the Ocracoke Island Lighthouse, and I think I have it with this one. I shot this just after sunset from the 4th floor balcony of our motel, The Anchorage Inn.

We spent Sunday afternoon with our friends and innkeepers Andy & Karen Fisher touring the waters of the Pungo River and Pantego Creek aboard their boat, a 32 foot Nordic Tug. Andy sells real estate in the area, while Karen manages the inn. Andy happened to mention that he needed a water view photo of one of his listings, and I just happened to know a photographer. I’d say it was probably fair trade for a couple of hours on the boat!

I don’t know a lot about crabbing, but I do know that crab pots make pretty interesting photo subjects. We happened upon a place that sells crab pots along the road near Engelhard, North Carolina. This place actually had a bunch of used ones, which seem to have a bit more character than the new ones

We’ve had a great trip so far. We spent Saturday touring the backroads around the Pocosin Lakes area and Lake Mattamuskeet. We just happened to be near Engelhard, on the east side of Lake Mattamuskeet late in the afternoon. I spotted this scene along the way and got a couple shots before the great light went away.

Friday we depart on our much-anticipated adventure to the North Carolina coast. Three nights in Belhaven, three nights on Ocracoke Island then three nights in Beaufort. Got some good advice on photo spots from our good buddy Kevin Adams and are looking forward to a great trip.

I spent some time this weekend going through some images from last year’s trip. This was one of a number of images I made of sunset over the Pantego Creek in Belhaven.