Green is Good

Tremont Road Bridge

Great Smoky Mtn. Nat. Park

All winter I was looking forward to the spring workshop I was going to in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. Looking forward to the spring blossoms along the rivers and the wildflowers growing in the forests.

Then the early spring came.

Everything was early, the blossoms and flowers came and went before I got there. I didn't know what to expect, but something was there that made up for the missing ones.

Green.

Everything was green, and so many different shades of green that I found myself doing something I never do. I always find myself cranking up the saturation levels to get the look I like, but for the first time I can remember I had to slide the saturation levels to the left just to make the image believable.

Flowers and blossoms would have been special, but now I know green is good too.

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Little Things

While I was wondering around the Smokies last weekend I did something I don't do often enough.

I just took my time, looked around, sat on a rock once in a while, and took it all in.

Usually when I'm off taking pictures I seem like I'm rushing things. Can't wait to set the tripod up, click the shutter, take the picture, and go on to the next one.

I think my photos have been suffering from that. I've got to slow down. Slow down and look for the little things. Composition, lighting, all the details and the little things that make a picture an image.

Speaking of little things....the "big" mushroom in this image is only about 3/4 inch tall. Took my time, saw it on the side of a log, and had the best time of the weekend playing around with it.

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Elkmont

Elkmont Cottage

Great Smoky Mtn. Nat. Park

I just got back late last night from a workshop in the Smokies at the Tremont Institute there. One of the places we spent time in was called Elkmont. It has a campground, trails along the river, and a fascinating group of thirty or more old run down cottages hidden amongst the trees of the forest and lining the river banks.

No one in our group knew the story behind them and I even stopped a ranger (well actually he stopped and lectured me for being inside one of the cottages) and asked what the story was. Sadly, he didn't know the true story and seemed like he didn't want to know.

But I'm going to find out. Why the owners left; when they left; who they were. Someone has to know and have written a story of it somewhere.

The little cottages, in all colors and shapes just sit there right in the middle of this National Park just as the people left them when they moved on.

Like a modern day Mesa Verde.

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For Edward Abbey

I just finished reading a book by Edward Abbey called "Desert Solitaire". It's essentially based on his year of being a park ranger in what is now Arches National Park (really about a lot more than that, but that's enough for the sake of this blog). His first year of service as a ranger was in the late 1950's when the park wasn't even a national park yet and didn't even have a paved road into it.

This is an image of the area in Arches where he stayed in a small aluminum trailer and under a canvas roofed structure when it was too hot to stay inside. The image doesn't portray the size and scale of the area very well; it's almost impossible to do that. Just to put it into proportion, I've recently read that the "small" round top of Balanced Rock (off to the far right side of the image) weighs 7 million pounds!

Balanced Rock, Arches National Park

It's this size, the fact that you can see for what seems like forever, that keeps Denise and me coming back to this area. You can't do that in Michigan where we live. You don't get that same feeling. Sky like this doesn't happen at home.

Edward Abbey not only got to see it, he got to live in it. Read his book and you'll see how much he appreciated it.

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