Justin and Ashley | Virginia Engagment Photographer

 Recently I had the pleasure of hanging out with this couple, Justin and Ashley.  We almost cancelled the shoot due to weather(apparently Ashley thinks that 60° is too cold), but I told her that she just needed to 'man up' and do it!  I said this partly because I was really excited to go shooting, and partly because I rented an 85mm 1.2 L and was pumped to use it, and partly because she just needed to man up. 

Well, I can see that she did 'man up' indeed.  We were wading through a creek, hiking through brush, and spending time up at Doughton Park, which can be a bit chilly when the wind picks up.

The fun I had with his couple set the fun scale to a new maximum.  I had a great time and they are pleased with the images.  And aside from the time where I slipped on top of a waterfall and almost fell to my death, the shoot went off without a hitch.  :)





At the Brenigar Cabin



At a waterfall in Northern North Carolina



Sunset at Doughton Park



Some great color during sunset at Doughton Park



After sundown shot at the Bluffs Lodge Terrace





Justin and Ashley put in some time making props and the results were great.



Hanging Rock - North Carolina State Parks

So, when I found out that Hanging Rock State Park was less than 90 minutes away from my house I was just a little disappointed that I had not gone there earlier.  It will suffice to say that I was rewarded for waiting so long:)


Enjoy some of my favorite images below, or click here for the full gallery.

Near one of the first waterfalls I visited was a grown up bird wondering when the baby birds were gonna stop complaining.



Hidden Falls on the Indian Creek Trail.




The upper part of Window Falls




The Lower Cascades, my favorite falls of the park.




A sunset from Hanging Rock and a great finish to the day.



Snow is Awesome

That's me, just south of Fox Hunter's Paradise

 

With a little work, snow can be(and always is) a wonderful thing.  Sure, we have to sometimes live without electricity, water, internet, or other amenities.  We have to shovel our driveways or get stuck, we have to brush off our satellite dishes to restore entertainment, we sometimes have to light a candle to create enough light to play scrabble.  I mean, it can be a very traumatic experience.

 

I for one, absolutely love snow.  The more the better.  I love the change in the landscape, the ice natural sculptures of ice, and the crunch under my feet.  I also love how snow can bring on an absolute quiet. 

 

I started my day getting dressed at 4a.m.  Since my area recieved over 6" of snow the previous evening, I new that I was gonna need a good head start to make it to Fox Hunter's Paradise by sunrise. 

 

The county road crew came and scraped our road(with an actual constuction scraper), creating a huge pile of snow at the bottom of my driveway.  I thought I could get a little speed and blast through the snow in reverse, but of course I got stuck.  I don't own a shovel, so I found myself trying to dig my car out with a utility rake.  I had been digging for about ten minutes when my neighbor, a local mail carrier who was on his way to work, came up behind me and offered a push.  This was critical in getting me to the parkway on time(and keeping my car from blocking half of the road).

 

I then drove to the Highway 18/Blue Ridge Parkway Junction and parked my car in a safe spot on the side of the road.  It's just shy of 2 miles to Fox Hunter's Paradise, and since a few 4x4's had driven the parkway the night before, I was able to walk in thier tracks:)  I made it to the overlook at the beginning of blue hour, with stars still showing. 

 

While I waited for the sun to rise, I snapped a few predawn shots before heading down the parkway just a little ways to capture the sun breaking the horizon.  The air was coooooooooooold before sunrise.  I tried to clean my graduated filter by breathing on it and wiping it off(I know, not the best choice) and all I got was bits of ice on my filter as it froze immediately.

 

After sunrise walking back to the car, I decided to stop into gully creek, but the rhododendrons that were pushed down by all the snow made navigating the creek very difficult, so I didn't hang around long...

 

Enjoy the image below, and click the link to view the full gallery from Friday's fun.

 

 

Click Here for the Full Gallery



 

 

 

The Sun breaks the horizon near Pilot Mountain 

 

One Red Morning

An awesomely red morning on the Blue Ridge Parkway.  The sun produces an awesome glow just before sunrise, and is a wonder red orb low in the sky just after.  Then the color goes away and I head in to work:) 

Pilot Mountain Pre-dawn



 

Happy Sunday, thanks for looking. :)

It's all about TIME

I don't want to complain to you, but I must tell you.  I have had the last three days off of work.  These were beautiful fall days with lots of sunshine and a nice breeze.  They were perfect for, well, anything other than what I was doing.
My sinuses have been giving me a bit of trouble lately, and ever since the repair man came to fix our oil furnace I have had a debilitating headache.  Possibly the worst headache I have ever had, and it didn't quit for over 3 days.  I gotta say I get depressed when I can't be outside on a gorgeous day.  When I am stuck inside(or just limited to what I can do) I feel like I am wasting my most valuable resource... Time.
I find it funny how much we as humans waste time.  More time is not guaranteed, nor is it ever able to be replenished, yet, we waste it like crazy.  Whether we are watching mindless tv, looking at facebook(biggest time killer ever), or just being lazy... we waste TONS of time.  Even right now as I write this, I am essentially killing time.  I don't have anywhere to be so I sat down and edited some photos from this morning.
Editing photos becomes cruising the web, reading news.... killing time.

In Edward Abbey's 'Desert Solitaire', he talks about a place where the days are long, and time seems to creep and last forever, just as it should be.
I couldn't agree more, it's hard to find that anywhere but the desert but I think it's still worthwhile to look.

Time is an enemy in life.  work deadlines, sales quotas, retirement funds, savings accounts, all things that take up multiple resources including time.  I think it's important for all of us to find time to escape time.  For me, photography gives me a sense of that peace.  Like today, for example.  I knew exactly when the sun was going to rise, I showed up early and set up different compositions, took some test exposures, adjusted my polarizer, and waited for the sun to rise.   I start shooting like crazy, hurrying from one composition to the next... and just like that, the sun was up, and the shooting was over.  But I didn't just walk back to the car and leave, the moment just after the sun comes up out of the clouds is my favorite.  It's when I turn the camera off, put the lens cap on, move the tripod off to the side, and just watch and feel the warmth.  For a moment there, I really stopped caring about the time, and that right there is a little slice of heaven.

Fall color near Fox Hunter's Paradise on the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Dawn over Pilot Mountain - North Carolina

North Carolina is about 10 miles from where I live.  It's significantly faster for me to go to the lookouts in North Carolina than it is to any in Virginia(at least it is for the worthwhile ones:).

I photograph this pretty often, mainly because it never lets me down.  As long as the fog isn't too terribly thick, the views from the Fox Hunter's Paradise area never disappoint. 

This was taken just south of Fox Hunter's Paradise, at a large opening off the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Sort of unrelated side story.....

The Grand Tetons in Wyoming are a beautiful sight to see.  So beautiful in fact, that the fur traders that first came to the area called them "les Trois Tétons" or "the Three Breasts."  "The Three Breasts", how awesome of a name is that!? 

I am hoping that after the fall of civilized man, and rebirth of the cave man(it's bound to happen), that the future, primitive, uneducated fur traders will give Pilot Mountain a proper name.  I can't say exactly what that will be, but my recommendation would be either Bosom Hill, or Mt. Milk Canon or something like that:)



Good Morning......

Pilot Mountain Panorama

I took a little drive to Doughton Park yesterday morning via the Blue Ridge Parkway.  The first image was taken very near the park, showing how the Blue Ridge Mountains got their name.

The final two pictures are a panorama of Fox Hunter's Paradise just after sunrise.  The first image is very scaled down.  The second image was left a bit larger so you could scroll across it and see some nice detail of the mountains.  I tried to upload it in its full sized glory but blogger said the file was too big:)

Shot with Pentax K20d + 16-45

Panorama shot with Pentax K20d + Sears 135mm 2.8

Moonrise at Fox Hunter's Paradise

I love a crescent moon. 

Back home the evening crescents over the Beartooth Mountains in a rich blue sky were something to sit and be amazed by.  Watching a moon rise or set is a wonderful experience, it appears as if the moon is slowly making its way up or down... photographing the moon is a different story, you don't really get a feel for how quickly it moves until you are trying to compose it in your frame.

In my earlier days of photography and a smartphone with no apps, if I were to photograph a moonrise, it would most likely be by chance that I was out and about already shooting. 

Nowadays everything(well, almost) is planned.  I know exactly when the sun and moon are rising and setting, I have a solid idea of where they will rise during different times of the year, and I plan around this accordingly. 

This particular trip was one that the gf probably didn't like.  The moon was set to rise at about 3:30am(give or take a few minutes depending on whether there is a mountain in your way).  Which meant getting up at 2:45am.
 I only live about 10 minutes from the Blue Ridge Parkway, and the Parkway is my current photography focus so I went to a place called Fox Hunter's Paradise.  It's a busy place during the day with motorhomes and motorcycles, but tonight I didn't see a soul.

I tried at first to use my Pentax K20d with it's 135mm 2.8 lens, but that cameras dynamic range and limited usable ISO quickly had me using my Canon 5d ii with the Sigma 50mm.

And I think it turned out just fine:)

The planet Venus accompanies the moon on her rise into the sky...

Panorama of Fox Hunter's Paradise

What makes the Blue Ridge Parkway awesome, is that there aren't any stops. Any intersecting highways are avoided by bridges over the parkway(or the parkway over the highway)

Here is one of the bridges.  This highway connects Galax, VA with NC.

Two images used here, one to focus on the bridge, the other on the stars.

I'd better get some sleep:)  Thanks for stopping by...

Barbed Wire, Spiderwebs, and Red Sky

I am hoping you will enjoy these images from the Parkway.
The fog was thick as I left the house well before sunrise. It scattered just enough to allow me to see some really nice color.

On the way back I grabbed a few macro shots of some barbed wire near the house.



A soft landscape shot at 1.4




More 1.4 Landscape

 

A classic North Carolina Scene taken by sticking 3 images together.  Shot with the Sigma 50





I am under the impression that young spiders, new to the web-making scene, use these barbs as practice:)





Refraction... I shot this with apertures 14, 6.3, and 2.8.   The 2.8 image left only the largest drop in focus, with everything else out of focus.  6.3 allowed a few more of the drops to come into focus, but still not the results I wanted.  At 14, the shape and detail of the barb shows just enough while not being distracting.



Thanks for looking:)  Feel free to leave a comment or a question(no need to log in)

Cumberland Knob Macro Photography

Yesterday I had the whole day off!!(sort of).  I took the gf to work, grabbed the camera, and headed down to the Cumberland Knob in North Carolina.  I made sure to bring my almost functioning Tokina 100mm 2.8 Macro(I got it sandy at the beach and now it won't focus to infinity:(.
 The Cumberland Knob is located just south of the V.A./N.C. line on the Blue Ridge Parkway.  There you will find a large picnic area, a 2.5 mile hiking trail, an awesome little creek at the bottom of a ravine, and TONS of macro opportunities!  I also had the (soon to be replaced) Canon 24mm 2.8, and the Sigma 50mm 1.4.

I like shooting macro for a couple of reasons... One is, the 'Grand Vista' doesn't happen as often in the Southeast as it did back home, so I try to 'focus' on different, smaller things.  The other reason is that I when I look through a macro lens at full magnification, I feel like I can see the backbone of our entire ecosystem, and that is pretty cool.  Enjoy...



Close Focus with the Sigma provides wonderful bokeh




It's difficult to match up the plane of focus with the subject sometimes(notice the blurry edges of the web)




A single strand of webbing crosses in front of a completed web in the background.




The green here is holding on strong, but the yellow is showing its face in spots..






Some TINY mushrooms growing on top of a stump.



This was fun to photograph.  I used live view and the Canon Depth of Field Preview to help me select the perfect focus point and aperture.





I had the pleasure of watching a spider make one of these tightly wound webs.



He hangs in a heart:)

DUN DUN DUN!!!  Fall is coming!!

A colorful leaf(shot with 24mm)

(shot with Sigma 50mm)

A mushroom and a rock sharing some space on the forest floor.

A splash of bright yellow in a dark green forest.

This little photo walk got me super excited for the fall!  But I will take the warm weather as long as it feels like staying:)