Updated 2012: This blog post was originally written two years ago, in spring of 2010. The information here is still very valid and useful, but in the past couple of years I’ve adopted a more “minimalist” approach to photography, and especially wildflower photos. The main difference is that I’m now using a very lightweight camera,…
The image above was taken from the footbridge that leads to the Ramsay Cascades trail in the Greenbrier section of the Smoky Mountains. This wide panorama was created from five vertical panels joined together with a photostitch technique. And each vertical panel was created by combining four different exposures. So, the entire image that you…
Today’s photography tip is about impressionism and experimentation. I’ve tried Impressionism in my Smoky Mountains photography before, as in Smoky Mountains Monet. All of the photos here were taken with the camera hand-held, with no special Photoshop filters added and no manipulation in a Paint program. All of these effects were created by experimenting with…
Friday philosophy time combined with a photo tip … a two-fer-one! For me, so much of photography is about seeing the world within the world. Most photographs don’t jump out of the jumble in front of our eyes and say “here I am, take me!” Some do, but mostly not. Instead, I think of them…
Photographs of winter scenes, especially on cloudy days, often have too much blue. How much is too much is of course subjective, and you might want to emphasize the coldness of the scene with a blue cast. But it’s still good to be aware of the tendency for winter shots to look blue. If you…
Yesterday’s Greenbrier in Winter photo was so pretty that I had to do some more. Both of these are along the trail to Ramsay Cascades. The one above is the footbridge at the trail head, and the one below is on up the trail a bit. A nice wet slow that really clung to the…
Earlier this week I was out at the Ogle Place along the Roaring Fork in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. We had a snowfall followed by frigid temperatures. On this morning I was trying to keep feeling in my fingers with the temperature around 9 degrees! Photographing scenes like the ones above and below…
Happy Friday everyone! I recently took a break from our craft fair and stopped in at the Gatlinburg Festival of Trees, at the Mills Center just after Thanksgiving. In the picture above you might be able to see my reflection in the ornament, with the trees all around me. Very M.C. Escher, isn’t it? In…
Here’s a simple photography technique that can jazz up an image. You’ll need to stop your zoom lens down as far as it will go, to F22 or more. The idea is to get a long exposure, of at least one second or more. Then while the camera is exposing the image, twist the zoom…
The photograph above is the Green Headed, or Cutleaf Coneflower. It blooms all along the roadside in the middle of summer up near Clingman’s Dome in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park . Here’s a fun photo tip for taking a picture like the one above. One of my favorite techniques is to take the photo…
Photographing one of the many creek scenes in the Smoky Mountains presents a few challenges. First is the desire to capture the sense of flowing water, rather than water that is frozen. To do this you will need your camera on a tripod with an exposure time of one-half to three-quarters of a second. If…
I live in Gatlinburg TN, on the edge of the Great Smoky Mountains. The Smokies are a very spiritual place, and I attempt to capture some of that spirit in each of my photographs.
If you are in Gatlinburg, please stop in at my gallery .
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