I do not think it is possible to know a place well by visiting it only once; and I want to know the places I visit well. So I return time and time again because the place is always different; the conditions are always different; and the images I create will always be different. It is exactly that way with Cowee Mountains Overlook on the Blue Ridge Parkway where it slices between Jackson County and Haywood County in the Old North State; and every time I go I see something new, something I have not seen or noticed before. So a couple of weeks ago I found myself once more at Cowee in the late afternoon, and as I have become a better weather person, I reduce the times when conditions do not favor working, but rather demand that I simply be there joyfully, leaving my camera in the case. As I watched the light and shadow playing across the land, I realized that patience might reward me with a highlighted foreground and a mid-ground more in shadow. When this occurred, I was ready with my composition. A focal length of 27mm gave me the angle of view I wanted. An aperture of f/20 gave depth-of-field; and with a shutter speed of 0.4 second at ISO 100 I had a medium overall exposure.
I agree that places are always changing,but sometimes we do not notice the changes with the place we return to. We are just seeing it differently because we have changed. Either the events of our lives have changed us or our mood is different than the previous time we gazed at the scene or place. Great photo!
Hi Paul.Thank you very much for joining me and for your great observations.I could not agree more. You have expressed very directly what I only alluded to – that the differences in conditions are not only external, but very internal as well; and I appreciate your clarity. There can be no doubt that every time we return to a place, we will arrive with a different set of internal circumstances: mood, experience, maturity; and even by themselves, these would cause our creative experience to be different. If you combine them with the externals that are different each time, you quickly see that it’s pretty much like Thomas Wolfe observed, “You can never go home again.” For me it means I want to try to connect with the place itself as deeply as I can, so that my spirit and the spirit of place can merge into a feeling of unity which allows me to sense how I might express photographically what I am experiencing. Thanks, again, for sharing your thoughts.
Beautiful light creating texture in the clouds, ridges and foreground. If you were looking for that exact lighting in that spot, you could have waited for weeks or months and never caught it like that. Your knowledge of the weather and the area combined with your patience really paid off on this one!
Hi Nancy T., thank you for joining us. It’s so cliche to say “it’s always about the light;” and yet it’s always about very little else (other than the elements of graphic design, etc., etc.). To be serious, it is always about the light and its relationship to the scene it falls on. Without this particular kind of light on this scene, you have something completely different, but knowing that this kind of light is possible before you make the journey certainly helps to justify the effort when the light happens. I hope there are places near you where you have learned the nuances of light so well that you are rewarded nearly every time you go. Hope you are doing well.