Partly due to missing last Saturday’s sunrise, partly due to not seeing much fall color, and mostly due to a completely-clear weather forecast, I decided to try my hand at backcountry camping one week after living the easy life in a Hendersonville cabin. This time, I’d be right next to my sunrise spot; take in the crisp, 6000 foot altitude air; and eat my heart out at the expansive views. They say that just a few days of backcountry camping can free the soul. Two days in the Pisgah wilderness and I’m in full agreement.
Month: October 2014
Because Sunrises are too Hard
N.B.: this post is actually about photography. I deliberated before posting it as I didn’t want to turn the narrative into a rant, but after giving it some thought, I think it is important to mention that photography takes patience and motivation — which sometimes still aren’t enough to yield the desired result. The natural world is incredible whether I have a photograph to prove it or not; the world of my mind sometimes favors the nostalgia that proof offers. The post below is the original post.
Talk about tongue-in-cheek. The last time I wrote about this topic, I explained that it takes a certain odd individual to prefer sunrise to sunset:
Sunrises, on the other hand, demand effort — to stay awake, to get up, to suffer through the rest of the day and week. And even then, it’s a crapshoot as to whether the sky will alight with the right clouds to reveal a colorful sunrise.
They’re harder to predict (no clues when the sky is dark), involve extra effort rather than just schedule rearranging, and conditions (e.g. temperature) can be less favorable. This, then, is why when I drove an hour to go see today’s sunrise, I took only one picture. Even the exposure settings attest to how dark it was: ISO1600, 1/40 s, f/8. Perhaps the only thing more frustrating than a missed photographic opportunity — difficulty of capture be damned — is a lost memory card, and given that the latter didn’t happen this weekend and my penchant for early sun movements, one might wonder just how this one didn’t come to be.
Along the Diagonal
A recent camping trip took me just off the I-26 diagonal in the Upstate. The intention was to see hawks migrating along the Atlantic Flyway, but the hawks had their own intentions: in two hours of observations, we saw only a handful of the birds.
New perspectives
While I haven’t seen all of Charleston, most of my photos of the area have been of the bridge. Without natural elevation to influence the vantage point, I’ve also struck out on shooting an overview of the Lowcountry. That changed when a coupon for Holy City Helicopters appeared in my inbox.
A Turbid Sunset
In late August, I decided to give Pitt St another go-around. The week had been rainy but cleared as it neared Friday, leaving behind some clouds and making me hope the sunset would be a bombshell of color.




