It seems like every year as we move from August to September, all the signs suddenly point to the end of summer. In these Smoky Mountains photos of buck deer in Cades Cove, you can almost feel what they feel. The easy days are slipping away ... the days of fattening...
Welcome to Friday. A weekend! Gratitude for another day. The simple beauty of dawn drifting towards the fullness of the day, weather becoming whatever it will. The road beckons, cares and worries in the rearview mirror. Miles away. There are many opportunities in the...
Philosophical Friday again. This time it's the classic situation that sometimes to go forward you've got to go backwards. The road up to Newfound Gap offers just such a case in point. The road climbs until it reaches a place on the mountain that is too steep for a...
Celebrating a fine Smoky Mountain day with a few thoughts gleaned from poet Wendell Berry: I come into the peace of wild things … for a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free. We pray, not for new earth or heaven, but to be quiet in heart, and in eye,...
In the middle of a hot summer, I can get restless, and feeling a bit confined within the boundaries of "normal" images. I start to think "outside the camera." For example, a few weeks ago I wrote a post about camera movement during long exposures to create...
It's Philosophical Friday again, and we're continuing on with yesterday's post into the creepy interior of the Palmer House. The image above might be crying out "What happened? Where did the time go? It seems like just yesterday that Jarvis and his wife were rising at...
"The year's at the spring, And day's at the morn; Morning's at seven; The hill-side's dew-pearled; The lark's on the wing; The snail's on the thorn; God's in his Heaven— All's right with the world!" Robert Browning
I think fog gets a bad name. It's typically about what fog can obscure: living life in a fog, the fog of war, the fog of depression. Well, like our neighbor over in the mountains of western North Carolina, Carl Sandburg, I think fog has delightful qualities. For...
The picture above is the footbridge leading to the Ramsey Cascades Trail in the Greenbrier section of the Smoky Mountains. Yes, it's still cold and quiet around here. Another cold, snowy scene from the Greenbrier is below. But to warm things up on the waning days of...
These are stressful times. So much strife in the world, polarized beliefs, and intolerance. Some days it's too much for a sensitive person, and I have to turn off the news and turn off my thoughts. I use nature, and the grand expanse of Smoky Mountains at my doorstep,...
I have been thinking of creating some Smoky Mountains photos with words of inspiration for some time. These four are my first offerings. All four are currently hanging in the Gatlinburg Gallery, mounted on frameless 8x12 floats. However, they could be printed and...
This blog has been inactive for several months. Where has the time gone? Well, most of it was taken up during construction of this wonderful little cabin in the Blue Ridge foothills of North Carolina. No, we are not leaving Gatlinburg, and the William Britten Gallery...