NC Trip: Day 1.

I didn't expect it to take me this long to post photos! I am ashamed.

On the bright side, I've been kinda busy at the 'business' blog (check out the link, righthand column), redecorating and rearranging things. And I've been learning studio photography and how to shoot people. :) (With my camera) I've also been to the Chinese Lantern Festival at the botanical garden. So there is plenty to post in the coming days and weeks. Hope you enjoy!

Okay. Day 1.

I made it to Asheville in 8 hours and 45 minutes. I am awesome. I managed to sleep a bit before packing up the car and heading out by 1 am. So with no pit stops for sleep - yay! - and two stops for gas (boooo), I showed that stretch of highway who's boss.

We had quite a first day (we being my photog friend Jennie and her husband Randall. I know. I'm always the third wheel). We went to: Looking Glass Falls, Graveyard Fields, the Richland Balsam area, and stopped at a multitude of overlooks all along the way.

I had uber-prepared, as I think I've mentioned here on the blog, by purchasing two more ND filters, both a +4. So stacking them along with the +2 I already had, meant that I could finally, really get those waterfall shots. It also meant that I came to understand the limitations of my camera better, and while I love my entry-level DSLR, I am no longer an entry-level player.

So here's Looking Glass:



Yellowstone Prong along the hike to Graveyard Fields:



A zoom shot of the lower portion of the lower falls (more on why in a sec):



And a portrait-style orientation of the lower falls:



Notice. The people. They were everywhere. In the water, on the rocks, at the top of the falls, at the bottom, crawling up, crawling down...it made me wish I'd packed something other than my camera. Now, the weather was great, and it was a cloudy day for about half of it so prime time for people to get and enjoy their beautiful state. But all the same...I guess I just never though of waterfalls as places to go frolicking in a bathing suit. I thought you were supposed to stand in awe of nature, and get a few great shots. (And believe me, the crowds were worse at Looking Glass)

So there are a few folks in the photo above - but at least they're wearing nice colors. ;-)

A few pretty shots, from the Graveyard trail and from an overlook:







Funnily enough, though I'd gone on this trip with one singular goal besides re-connecting with my friend, that being to capture some great sunsets, I didn't take into account the perfection of the clouds until we were up in the Richland Balsam area.

It was stormy looking...



Then the light began to break through...



And then the heavens opened up.



A great final image for a great first day.

Caddo Lake...for real.

Well, I'm back home from east Texas.

I went for my job - but it didn't really feel like work. It was kind of an impromptu trip; the boss and I left on the train Thursday night and I just got home about three hours ago. You may recall that I went to Texas last March, and visited Caddo Lake State Park at Big Cypress Bayou. I was only able to stand at the water's edge that time; a steamboat tour is available in the spring, summer and fall, but I just couldn't get myself up early enough to go. I wasn't going to let that happen this time!

Of course the steamboat tour wasn't available now, as it's winter, so I found another tour run by a Caddo Lake native named John Winn. He gives several different kinds of tours, including a photography tour, so I booked one for myself for Saturday morning. There are lots of photos to show, but you'll have to endure my narrative too (as always). =)

I scheduled the tour for 7 a.m., since that was the earliest I could trust myself waking up for, and because there's that time of the morning right when the sun rises over the trees that the light is the most magical. John uses a Go Devil boat, which is shaped kind of like a canoe and powered by a motor, allowing us to wend through the thickets of cypress trees in a way regular boats (including that steamboat) can't.

Before the sun appeared, and because it's winter, everything was pretty monochromatic at first. No green leaves or blooms. John, being a photographer himself, mentioned that it's a good opportunity to use black-and-white photography, and I agreed. So this first set you'll see are my b&w conversions (and one experiment with a film filter), which definitely bettered the early photos.









If you're unfamiliar with bayous, they're filled with cypress trees that grow out of the water; John said there was one cypress that they'd calculated to be five hundred years old, with a thirty-foot wide base.



The stringy, curly stuff hanging from the branches is called Spanish moss. These trees lend very, very well to the often spooky atmosphere of the bayou (typically attributed to Louisiana; Caddo Lake actually crosses the border into Louisiana), and John offers a night tour for spotting gators and other wildlife, the air filled with the bellowing of frogs. I soooo want to do that.

Because of the way cameras expose for direct sunlight, I was able to get some shots that darkened the trees and water and gave a more evening time, 'spooky' feel.











As the sun continued to rise, rays shone on the trees and water, and the experience really began. You'll notice a variety of color tones; a lot of that has to do with how I composed the position of the sun in the photos. I also experimented a bit with color balance in post-processing, because in wintertime the bayou is almost like a blank slate; you can project many different qualities onto the grayish-brown trees and moss.

















I tinkered with white balance a bit too; in the following photo I used 'warm,' and while it was generally too much, I did like how this came out:



And I tried b&w on a brighter shot of a long stand of trees, and actually really like the result:



All in all, a great way to spend two hours (and eighty bucks...thanks Dad!). I absolutely plan on going back in late spring or summer to take advantage of the greenery and blooms at sunset, and I hope I can drag Sara with me... ;-)

Gray days.

This week I've decided to take some photos round the place with only my 50mm lens in black and white. It's a cool lens because the depth of field is so easy to manipulate, and there's a softness to the results you can't get with other lenses. Plus, coupling it with the black and white you automatically get that journalistic, documentarian style that, let's be honest, is pretty easy, as long as you get a little creative with the composition.

So, here is the first aggregation of photos from the first half of the week. Enjoy!

Yosemite.

Let's be real. It's all about the pictures. So let's get started.

When you're driving into Yosemite Valley (if you don't have time to go off the beaten trail before you reach the Valley because you only have one day to soak everything in), it takes about an hour. It would take about half an hour less - if you didn't have to screech to a halt every mile or so and snap, snap, snap away at the beauties of the earth everywhere.





And as you go, eventually Yosemite Falls dominates the scene, and there are so many vistas to choose from; pulling over is encouraged and those of us new to it all certainly did so.







I eventually made it to Curry Village where I was staying the night in a tent cabin; I checked in, packed what I needed for hiking, and headed over to the shuttle stop. I honestly had no idea where I would go first, but fortuitously, the Mirror Lake trailhead was just a couple of miles down the road. So I got off there and got to hoofing it (2.4 miles roundtrip).







Half Dome and El Capitan, respectively, are visible along the trail, and it's very nice that a ten-mile upward climb into bear-infested woods isn't required to get the view. :-)

I took the shuttle to Yosemite Falls next. Because of a particularly precipitant winter and spring, everyone has been buzzing about how the waterfalls would just be gushing forth, and this was the perfect time of year to see them. (Some do eventually dry up later in the year) I was pleasantly surprised by a very short hike to the perfect vista of the falls.







You can walk all the way to the base of the lower falls, which I did; to get a close-up visit to the upper falls requires, of course, a long, more strenuous hike.

I decided that, in order to not get caught out in the middle of nowhere and miss the last shuttle, I would go back to Mirror Lake and capture the warmer light of sunset. It was a cloudless day which was a teensy bit disappointing, but I really couldn't complain.









The photo just above is the result of my first experiment with photomerging. Which is basically the poor man's HDR. More to come on that, later!

The next morning I made a few last photo stops, in the Valley and then closer to the edge of the park, at Cascade Creek.





So, all in all, the chance of a lifetime, and I wish I could share all of the photos that I came away liking but this post would be far, far too long. So, I hope you enjoyed it as is!