Time always favors water; and water generally conspires with rock; and together they both overcome the march of history, that is to say, human history. Big Creek, the principal drainage of the northeast corner of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, flows from the heart of the high country, off the base of Tricorner Knob and Mt. Guyot, eastward and then northeast, before exiting the park into the waiting flow on the Pigeon River, tributary of the French Broad, one of the oldest rivers on Planet Earth. Near this boundary once operated the great logging mill of Suncrest Lumber Company and the logging town of Crestmont. Eventually the loggers and their machines went away, and Nature began her slow, but inexorable, process of restoration; and today there is little evidence remaining of a past that once threatened the mountains with much harm, but is now a distance memory slowly carried away by the waters of Big Creek.
A focal length of 27mm, upper-mid-wide-angleland, gave me the angle-of-view and spatial relationships I was looking for. An aperture of f/16, from perhaps 2′ above the leaves, provided depth-of-field; and a shutter speed of 0.8 second at ISO 100 in the calm water of the mid-ground, gave me an overall very slightly darker-than-medium exposure.
I can hear the wonder of Nat King Cole’s melodious voice and I know that winter cannot be far behind.
Whether I comment or not, I always look forward to your Sunday posts and enjoy and am inspired by them. Merry Christmas
Merry Christmas, Happy New Years and may the light shine upon you.
Words as thought provoking as the picture.
I remember the first time I went to Big Creek. I was totally amazed at the size of the boulders that were in the creek. I am sure there are other creeks that are much like this one, but I don’t know of another that is filled with such beautiful, huge “rocks”. Thanks for bringing back that 1st trip memory, oh so many years ago.
Lovely image Don. Merry Christmas. Thanks for sharing your images and thoughts with us.
Much love and respect,
Tammy
Don, as much as I appreciated your beautiful image (more in a moment), I appreciated even more your brief reflection on the power of water and time to heal scars. It gives hope, actually, because we know we’re continuing to inflict horrific damage on the planet daily. Wouldn’t it be fascinating to take a time-traveling foreman from the Crestmont Lumber Company back to stand with you in that stream? Thanks for your pithy and reassuring comments about the self-healing powers of nature.
And, the image is delightful. Having fumbled with a tripod mid-stream myself a few times, I know the array of visual choices pose challenges. How much sky (if any) to include? Will all the branches distract? Blur vs sharpness? And on and on. I love the gentle arc of the branch way upstream and the mimicking curve of the large stone up close. Most pleasing!
Have a grand Holiday, and thanks for continuing to share your words and images.
Ray
What a splendid wide angle landscape, taking in everything from the near rocks and leaves to the distant trees. Thanks
Joel
Don, thank you for sharing your outstanding images. Bests wishes for you and Bonnie for the holidays and 2019.
Thanks to Ray Foote for pointing out the arching branch. I became so involved with the arcs of boulders that I didn’t notice the branch (well, maybe subliminally?). I enjoy the way the edge of the foreground boulder is paralleled by the arcs of midground boulders, and how together they draw the eye up and into the background. The image and your reflections on human history brought to mind part of an old hymn by Isaac Watts: “Time, like an ever rolling stream, bears all its sons away. They fly, forgotten, as a dream dies at the opening day.”
Don as always just breath taking!!! Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!!
The wide angle mountain stream images are always magical. The large leaf-covered rock in the foreground looks like a welcome mat and the arched limbs at the top are like hugs. It’s a very warm, playful image saying it’s a great day to have a great day. Thanks for sharing. Merry Christmas to all!
Don and Bonnie may you have a very Merry Christmas and a New Year filled with the best of everything and good health in 2019. And a continued rapid recovery for you Don. Thank you for bringing the beauty of our natural world and inspiration thru your images and words throughout the year. Hope to see you out there in the Smoky Mountains with your camera in tow at the first sign of spring.
One of my favorite areas in GSMNP. I always enjoy seeing how another interprets a scene that I have spent time with. On the way back last year from our adventure at Arrowmont, I spent the day here. In this location, I was first drawn in by the arching trees and searched for the foreground, whereas you were drawn in by the foreground. Thanks for sharing. John
Merry Christmas to you and Bonnie! I don’t think I have been to this particular site, but it is certainly quintessentially Smokies!
Wow! I want to skip along those rocks all the way to wherever the trail ends. Surely another trail will begin there. Love to you and Bonnie. Wishing a blessed and bountiful holiday for you and your families.
Pat?
My favorite part of this image is the reflection of the trees in the bits of water between the rocks.
Good morning, Everyone. Thank you all very much for joining me for this final conversation of 2018. Next week we begin the seventh year of Image for the Asking. It has been a wonderful personal journey for me, and I am honored to have been able to share this path with so many of you over these years. I look forward to a new year of discussion about the photographic experience and the world of creativity that it inspires; but we still have the conversation at hand, so let’s get started.
Hi John. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you. We hope yours was as filled with meaning and joy as was the Solstice that Bonnie and I shared; and I do hope you have been able to do more than your share of rambling in Nature’s beauty over the past several months.
Hey Mark. It’s always good to have you with us. I do appreciate your thoughtful comment. Aren’t we blessed to be able to share words and images with each other, and what better way to give meaning to our shared experience?
Hey Lynn. Thank you for sharing your “Big Creek” story with us. I’m truly glad you have such a meaning-filled experience upon which to draw when thinking about the beauty of this incredible place. I think that having and remembering these experiences is such a tremendous asset to our creative expression of a place.
Tammy, it’s great to hear from you! I hope the arc of your life over these past years have been filled with goodness and joy. We’d love to hear what you’ve been up to and trust that it has gone very well. Walk in Beauty.
Hey Ray, your words and the word pictures they evoke always remind me of water flowing over crystal in their expressiveness and emotional richness. It would be very neat to stand with that Crestmont foreman on the steel bridge that is the trailhead of Baxter Creek Trail talking about the power of nature to clear away the traumas of human-time and reclaim the freshness of the natural world. You apt description of the compositional process is right on target: how to do and what to include, what to omit; and above all the great significance of relationships and how to express them. I wish for you and your family the same joy in this special time.
Hi Joel. It’s always good to hear from you. Knowing, as I do, your love for intimate landscapes, I am honored by your words about the wide-angle world. We are looking forward to seeing you in the New Year. Be well, my friend.
Hey Mike and Roni. Best wishes to both of you for this Holiday Season and for the coming year. It was wonderful having you with us at Lake Junaluska. I hope you new year is filled with much pleasure in the experience of our beautiful world and creative opportunities to match.
Hi Donald. I hope you are having an excellent Holiday Season. As always, your comments are well-considered and delightfully received. Your consideration of foreground, mid-ground, and background relationships and their functioning in support of the overall experience of the image is spot on. And when creating a wide-angle landscape, it is precisely this awareness that serves to connect the dots in service of the ultimate experience of wide-angle images. Have a wonderful New Year. We hope our paths will cross somewhere down its road.
Hi Mike. Thank you so much for your kind words. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you, as well. Walk in the light of Beauty.
Hey Nancy T. As always, your stories are like wonderful hugs. Thanks for all of your wonderful expressions. We hope you are having a great family Holiday in Sun Country. Your words are like a welcome mat, indeed. Walk in Beauty.
Hi Lou. I very much appreciate all of your kind words and wishes. The recovery is going very well so far, even if it often seems like the pace is one of a snail running a marathon. It would be a fun thing if our paths did cross somewhere in these wonderful old mountains in the coming year. Let us hope that such will happen.
Hey John. Our shared love of water and water imagery is a great creative bond between us, and I always enjoy seeing how you have chosen to express the watery world of nature. I recall your telling me about the time you spent here after Arrowmont. We would both have a great time with Ray Foote’s Crestmont foreman. It would be inspirational to hear what he would have to tell us. Hope you and Michele have had a wonderful Christmas with family and that your winter adventures are just beginning.
Merry Christmas to you, Phyllis; and thanks for your kind wishes. Big Creek is,indeed, quintessentially Smokies. Sometime we’ll gladly share it with you. Hope all is well in the Lone Star State.
Merry Christmas, Patricia, to you and Sue. Our current bodies might have a bit of difficulty (Degree: 6+) skipping over those beautiful boulders, but we’d keep practicing until we got it right, and then we’d go looking for that other trail you mentioned, in this body or in another. We hope you both have had a wonderful season, and we are really excited about seeing you in June.
Hi Micki. It’s great to have you with us! We have thought of you often in this season and hope you are doing well. We hope to come for a visit to Grateful Steps early in the New Year. You have isolated a most interesting small portion of such a much larger image. Reflections in water offer such amazing possibilities for creativity and they are always fun. Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year. Walk in Beauty.
Hi Nancy K. I am always glad to learn that you enjoy the images, and am even more appreciative to receive the words that your enjoyment engenders. You were a wonderful part of an excellent Wildflowers and Waterfalls gathering, and now that we have decided to no longer offer that adventure, your participation will always remind us of how much we enjoyed getting to know you.
Thank you all, again, for the richness you bring to my creative journey. It has been a wonderful adventure sharing this time with you over the past six year, and I look forward to sharing many more as we travel down this road. Happy New Year!