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Travel

An Early Fall Getaway

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Morning light and clouds at Pounding Mill Overlook on the Blue Ridge Parkway MP 413

Kathy & I had a last-minute chance to take off to the mountains this past weekend and meet up with some friends.  There are definitely signs of color in some spots, primarily the higher elevations.  We didn’t spend a lot of time photographing, preferring instead to explore the towns of Waynesville and Sylva.  I did manage to crawl out of bed early on Saturday for an attempt at sunrise, but we left with no evidence that the sun had risen other than the fact that the sky got lighter.  We did end up seeing some sun later in the day and on Sunday, but for the most part things were on the cloudy and foggy side.

Like many weekends in the mountains, this was one of widely variable conditions.  We found sun in some spots, were totally socked in with fog in some spots.  We discovered fall color in some places, while in others summer was still holding on tight.  We stopped by a waterfall along one of the side roads and in 15-20 minutes didn’t see a car, while earlier on the Parkway traffic was starting to get busy.

Waterfall on West Fork Pigeon River, Route 215 Lake Logan Road, Pisgah National Forest

I’m still struggling to find my photographic “groove” and I didn’t help myself much this weekend.  I guess I’ve just allowed myself to get out of practice.  It has been a crazy year so I have a good excuse, but it’s frustrating to feel so out of it, creatively.  I’m back on the upswing though, and am confident that I’ll get things back on track over the next month or so.

All in all we had a great weekend.  Good food and good times with friends are tough to top!

City lights of Hendersonville, NC shine through the pre-dawn fog from Pounding Mill Overlook on the Blue Ridge Parkway MP 413.

***

 I love the Blue Ridge Parkway, and it is one of my favorite places to visit any time of the year, especially in the fall.  But more and more I find myself struggling with the sheer number of people that head for the Parkway when the leaves start to peak.  In particular I’m bothered by what appears – to me at least – to be an increase in the irresponsible behavior and lack of respect that some drivers have.  This past weekend I witnessed a number of “bad apple” drivers, in particular motorcycle riders, doing stupid and reckless stunts.  Passing on curves and in no-passing zones, tailgating and intimidating drivers who weren’t going fast enough to suit them.  It really takes away from the peaceful experience that I have always gone to the Parkway for.  I understand that not everyone goes to the Parkway for peace and quiet, but when the antics of a few people manage to wreck the experience it is hard to tolerate.

I had already made plans to experience fall in other places this year, but after this past weekend and some similar experiences last year, I think I’m going to wait until I have time to plan my visits in mid-week to hopefully avoid most of the crazies.  I realize that most drivers and riders are careful and responsible, and that for the most part their biggest offense is making a lot of noise, but I think I’ll wait and head back in November and December, when only the most hardy adventurers are willing to brave the elements.

Morning light and fall color at Pounding Mill Overlook on the Blue Ridge Parkway MP 413

Fall happens everywhere, and I think my goal for this year will be to find Fall in some of the less-discovered places!  We’ve got some interesting adventures coming up, so stop by again soon to see what we’ve been up to.

Morning light and fog at Pounding Mill Overlook on the Blue Ridge Parkway MP 413
Photography

October 2012 Wallpaper

Morning light and fall color with an early snow fall from the Deep Creek Valley Overlook in Great Smoky Mountains National Park

Last fall we were treated to a relatively rare (for me, at least!) mix of fall color and snow.  We had driven up to Clingman’s Dome in the Smokies for sunrise, only to be chased back down by gale-force winds and blowing snow.  The morning light a few hundred feet below proved to be a good consolation.

October is definitely my favorite time of the year here in North Carolina.  We have a number of interesting adventures planned, including a long-overdue visit to Florida (not for fall color) so stay tuned for updates on our travels.  Whether you manage to see snow or not, I sincerely hope that your October is a wonderful one!

Photography, Travel

P.O.P.T.P.

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This wasn’t my idea…she just stopped in front of the camera. Sometimes you take what you get!

It’s been sort of an unofficial and undeclared project of mine to take photographs of people taking photographs, aka Pictures Of People Taking Pictures.  ‘Unofficial’ because I don’t “set out” looking for such photos, I just happen upon them.  ‘Undeclared’ because I haven’t published or printed any groups of them.  I just have a growing number of “P.O.P.T.P.s” in my collection and sort of figured that one day there would be enough decent ones to make up a series.

I was on the beach at Hilton Head a few weeks ago taking photos at sunrise.  Most people see the tripod and walk behind me.  A few of them are so oblivious to my presence that they walk right in front of the camera.  Occasionally they stop.

This woman was with a group of 4 people walking by.  I was set up for my shot and had Live View activated, so I was able to watch the scene in case they “posed” for me.  One of the hidden advantages of Live View is perhaps the ability to take pictures when it doesn’t look like you are taking pictures?  I was able to watch as they walked into my scene.  I thought they were going to keep walking, but at the very last moment this woman stopped and took several shots.  While she was standing still I was able to click off a few frames of my own.

Photography, Travel

Protection, or Overkill?

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Curves and Angles

When I was growing up I had an aunt, or a cousin or some relative who had the seats in her car covered with plastic.  I always thought that was a little strange, to take this nice comfortable fabric and cover it with hot, sticky plastic, just so it wouldn’t get dirty or wear out.  I don’t remember for certain, but I think she might have had the furniture in her house covered in plastic too.  People used to – probably still do – use plastic carpet runners to keep people from walking on the carpet.  I’ll admit that I can see the logic in covering carpet with carpet runner, in the winter, when it used to snow, and we people would come in the house with snow on their boots.  But in the middle of summer?  Nah!

Too Lazy for Sunrise

Today, we can’t buy a cell phone without being offered a “screen protector.”  I don’t understand why I would buy a fancy new phone with a gorgeous display and stick a piece of foggy plastic on it.  So it won’t get dirty?  It’s a touch screen, for Pete’s sake!  It’s going to get finger marks on it!  When I bought my last laptop, one of my students was appalled that I hadn’t paid another $50 or more for some rubberized piece of goo to cover the computer.  I said, “someone went to a lot of trouble to make this computer look so nice, why would I want to cover it up?”  We get sold $10 UV filters to put in front of our camera lenses, we can buy “skins” to cover up our cameras and lenses, but for what?  So it won’t look like we use them?  Come on, we don’t use them enough as it is, why cover it up with some aftermarket stuff someone thinks we need, just to keep our gear looking nice.

I have no idea why that was stuck in my head today.  Well actually I do, and I feel much better now.  Thanks!

Stucco Shadows
Photography, Travel

A Week At The Beach

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Sunrise on the Beach, Hilton Head Island, SC

I’ve been away for a while.  I didn’t go far, but things are finally settling down after a difficult and hectic August.  Kathy has gotten her Dad’s affairs pretty much in order, and to the extent that I’ve been able to help I have helped.  Work demands have taken some of my attention too, so there just hasn’t been a lot of time for writing and creativity.  The blog got pushed to the side for a little while, but here I am.

Sunrise on the Beach, Hilton Head Island, SC

Kathy & I spent Labor Day week at the beach.  Besides all the hoopla that was already playing out in Charlotte (the DNC, for those who pay even less attention than me) it was time for a break.  Kathy was just about wrung out and so was I, so it was perfect timing.  A trip to the beach was definitely in order.

Our “beach of choice” is Hilton Head Island, SC.  We’ve been going there for years, starting with a weekend each year, then a week, and now we try to get there for a week and several weekends each year.  We like it there, the beach is beautiful, and it’s generally quiet.  There is plenty of activity for those so inclined, but this year we literally rented beach chairs for 7 days straight and sat on our backsides.  We walked, talked, read and just generally chilled.  And I took a few photographs.  Not many, but I managed to haul myself out for sunrise a few mornings, and even got Kathy to come with me for one (I promised her breakfast!).

Sunrise on the Beach, Hilton Head Island, SC

One of the best things about “going to the beach” for us is the state of mind we go with.  We don’t live hectic lives by a lot of peoples’ standards, but it gives us a chance to “put it all away.” And yes, while the DNC was perhaps a historic event, just because it happened to be in Charlotte didn’t change my lack of interest, and it certainly didn’t give me reason to turn on the TV.  We don’t watch TV anyway, so we certainly don’t do it at the beach.  I guess we had a TV, but I never opened the doors of the entertainment center to look.

Sunrise on the Beach, Hilton Head Island, SC

I do very little blog reading or Facebook on vacation.  I don’t have a need to post constant “jealousy updates” that my friends can “Like” and tell me how lucky I am.  I do some photography but that is not the focus of our time or attention there, and unless I have a rainy day with nothing else to do, I’ve gotten completely away from processing photos.  I prefer to live in the moment, and the minute I put my nose into the computer screen “the moment” goes away.

The same holds true with writing.  I sometimes think I’d like to spend some time writing while I’m at the beach, but instead what I do is think and take notes. For the same reasons I don’t like to process photos, I don’t want to take time and attention from being there.  In many ways I write for escape, and when I’m already “escaped” I want to keep it that way.  So I think my thoughts and make my notes to refer to later when something sparks the need to write.  I plant seeds.  I like it that way.

Sunrise on the Beach, Hilton Head Island, SC

We don’t completely escape from reality on vacation.  Hilton Head has numerous wonderful restaurants.  We have a number of “have-to” favorites and always like to try some new places.  This year the new ones were about 50-50 successful, some of the old ones are getting a little old, and a few places we had been to only a few times but tried again were worth a visit.  We sometimes get out to do some shopping or visit a gallery or two, but this year the weather was so beautiful we didn’t have a reason to leave the beach.  We do more of that in the winter if we visit in January or February.

Sunrise on the Beach, Hilton Head Island, SC

But we’re here now, back to “reality” for a little while.  I’ve got some photos to share and a few stories to tell.  And we’ll be back to our usual traveling routine after a few weekends at home.  So, sorry if you missed me, but thanks for sticking around.

Sunrise on the Beach, Hilton Head Island, SC
Photography

September Wallpaper

The Whalehead Club at Currituck Heritage Park near Corolla, North Carolina

I set this up to auto-post on 9/1 and hopefully it will work!

This is one of my favorite photographs from a visit to the northern Outer Banks back in 2009, and I thought it might make a nice intro to fall.  The nice clear sky hints at the return of autumn while retaining just a hint of summer’s warmth.  I had walked around this building earlier in the day and loved the windows.  The possibility of a reflection of the sunset in those windows at dusk were what brought me back.

The building is known as The Whalehead Club and is located at Currituck Heritage Park near Corolla, North Carolina.  It is the restored private residence of northern industrialist and conservationist, Edward C. Knight Jr. and now houses the Whalehead Club Historic House Museum.

Photography

August 2012 Wallpaper

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Moon Over Price Lake at Sunrise, Blue Ridge Parkway, NC

Well, how did that happen?  We just finished June and already July is over!  Of course that means we are edging toward Fall, and an end to Summer’s heat is just around the corner.

Price Lake is a hit-or-miss spot for me photographically.  A decent photograph here generally depends on getting something interesting to reflect in the water.  Sometimes it is fall color, sometimes you can catch some good clouds at sunrise or sunset.  Such was this case on an August morning back in 2005.  One morning prior to attending the annual Camera Clinic at Grandfather Mountain, I was up to shoot the sunrise and shortly after the sun came up I ventured down to the lake to see what was happening.  It’s a little hard to see in this photo, but a nearly full moon was playing hide-and-seek in the clouds.  I got a few shots with the moon in the clear, and a few with it partly or mostly obscured.

This photo was taken with my Canon 20D and 17-40 lens.  It was originally processed using Photoshop Elements, then reprocessed using each of the prior versions of Lightroom.  For this calendar I converted the file to Process Version 2012 and updated my settings one more time.  It’s amazing what newer software can do with photos that were taken with cameras that are now sitting in storage.

Photography

A Little Breathing Room

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Pedestrian overpass in Roanoke, VA

I mentioned in several earlier posts that I had just about run out of hard drive space, and that coincidentally one of my three drives – the one that had been my main working hard drive for three years – had been acting weird and giving my trouble.  I switched over to one of my backup drives, relegated the old main drive to temporary backup status, and ordered new hard drives.  Exciting, huh?  Non-photographers can probably stop here…this is as good as it gets!

This past Monday I took delivery of three new 2 Terabyte Western Digital My Book Studio external hard drives to replace the 1 Terabyte drives I had been using.  It wasn’t a hard job, in fact it was remarkably easy.  But given that those drives contain all my photos from the last 8 plus years, I wanted to shut down Lightroom and stop processing photos until I was finished.  The third drive finished copying sometime this morning.  It took about 15 hours to copy the data from the old drive to each new drive, but now I have three identical copies, one that stays connected to my computer, one that lives in a cabinet in my home office, and another that lives offsite at my work office.  I then use SuperDuper! to run incremental backups on a regular basis.  I did a backup on each of the new drives just for fun, and each one took 30 seconds.  But of course nothing had changed, so that was what I expected.  No problemo.

Acquainting Lightroom with the new drive couldn’t have been simpler.  I opened up Lightroom, pointed it to the new main drive, and in seconds it was synched.  Piece-o cake-o!  Back in business and ready for a few more years worth of photos.  Hopefully another 3 or so years, but it’s hard to say.  These files are getting rather large!

Photography, Travel

A Stop at Mabry Mill

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Blacksmith shop at Mabry Mill, at MP 177 on the Blue Ridge Parkway near Meadows of Dan, Virginia

Kathy & I headed to Roanoke, VA this past weekend, and as we often do we took the “slow way,” stopping at Mabry Mill, on the Blue Ridge Parkway at MP 177 in Virginia.  There’s a little restaurant there and some of their buckwheat pancakes are “just the thing” if you like that sort of thing.

Barn and vines, Mabry Mill, at MP 177 on the Blue Ridge Parkway near Meadows of Dan, Virginia

The mill itself is probably the single most photographed thing on the Parkway, so I don’t even aim my camera in its general direction these days, unless there is something really special to shoot.  After our sumptuous breakfast we took a few minutes to wander the grounds before heading back up the road.  They were setting up for their weekend demonstrations, and I got a couple of nice shots in the blacksmith shop.

Blacksmith shop at Mabry Mill, at MP 177 on the Blue Ridge Parkway near Meadows of Dan, Virginia

Here are a few photos from Mabry Mill to satisfy the curious until I get the Roanoke photos processed.

Old wagon at Mabry Mill, at MP 177 on the Blue Ridge Parkway near Meadows of Dan, Virginia
Photography, Travel

Just One Shot

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Rain, Billy’s Restaurant in Roanoke, VA

Kathy & I spent this past weekend visiting friends in Roanoke, VA.  More on that later.

Sunday afternoon we were walking around the downtown area, when a thunderstorm passed through.  Taking refuge under the overhang of the City Market, we were right across the street from Billy’s, a restaurant we had stopped at for cocktails and appetizers the evening before.

The girl in this photo is a hostess at Billy’s.  During the height of the downpour, she pulled up in front of the restaurant in her car, and one of her co-workers from inside came outside under an umbrella and handed her another umbrella through her car window.  She then drove around to the side of the building to park.  Sensing a possible photo opportunity, I maneuvered into a position I thought might be suitable, and waited for her to come down the sidewalk.  As she approached the front of the building, I lifted my camera, took this one shot, and she immediately covered her face with the umbrella and that was it.  But this is the shot I was looking for, and the expression on her face makes it for me.

Passing the Umbrella, Billy’s Restaurant in Roanoke, VA

The photo itself is probably not a big deal, but what excites me the most is that I envisioned the scene, saw it coming and made it happen.  The fact that I only got one shot is interesting, but I only needed one, right?

More to come on the rest of our wonderful visit with good friends, but I wanted to share this one before I go back to working on the rest of my photos.  I’ve got a few more!