A friend in Asheville sent an email Saturday with a couple of snapshots and said "finally, there is some nice color up here - you should see it!" After a Saturday of pulling up 2 rooms of what was arguably some of the nastiest carpet in the civilized world, I had no trouble signing off on Sunday to head west and hit some of my favored back roads to see for myself. Needed the fresh air. Needed the connection to Nature. Needed a break from the "concrete jungle".
With the deep blue sky and strong specular sunlight, the colors were bold and the shadows very deep, which wreaks a little havoc with photography as it is impossible to hold all highlights with all shadow details...the above is from a gravel Forest Service road I like to take from the Big Ivy community up the northwest flank of Craggy Gardens to the Blue Ridge Parkway. Sleepy gravel road that beckons you to stay a while. When I got to my favorite bend, I did just that. I stopped.
Not much water was tumbling down the little creek, and the once crystalline pool was now filled with floating, twirling colors of fall. (Remember, with virtually all of my blog posts, click on any picture to enlarge for a better look) There's something about creeks, rocks, and fall leaves that I find very comforting...and even more so when you take the time to 'be' with it...to just sit and look, turning off the 'thinking' mind and just letting the beauty and peacefulness envelope you.
I could tell from the leaves that had fallen that talk of a 'subdued' fall color change certainly had its exceptions...and wait 'til you see Thursday's Travelogue post this week - wanna see some mountain color? Hold on to your horses as I'll have a difficult time boiling my pictures down to the handful I'll post from the Black Mountain Range between Craggy Gardens and Mount Mitchell.
The deep blue sky and golden maple colors overhead made for enhanced water reflection in between the floating leaves...and as I moved in closer to select a more detailed shot, I was reminded of a simple physics lesson when it comes to photographing such a scene. The above picture appears natural as you would have seen it...but not really. The human eye is the most amazing camera of all, and can instantly refocus and combine visual changes in light and distance to where you often aren't aware it's doing all of that. The following 2 pictures reveal something to you you might not normally be aware of...
I found a nice little section where the orange-red Sugar Maple was reflecting amongst the shaded leaves. Your reaction is that the camera focuses on what's toward the center of the screen, letting the leaves and water be in focus. The big surprise is that the focal distance to the reflected Maple is not the water but the distance from the reflection to the tree itself added in. You can clearly see a focused Maple (such that the slowly rippling water would allow), with the floating leaves far from the zone of focus...
...and now the same shot focused on the floating leaves, the reflected tree now blurred. The second shot looks especially neat enlarged...where the water cohesion curvature glues the leaves to the water, some of those edges reflected the blue sky and made for a pseudo-postarized glow around some of the edges. If I had had a tripod, I could have mounted the camera and shot the scene at and aperture of f/22 or even f/32 to try and get both leaves and reflection in focus together; however, the time of the exposure would have been slow enough to allow for movement of both leaves and water ripples as to have rendered the scene potentially muddy and unfocused. Just a little photo tidbit, FYI.
And what creekside stop would not be complete without the mighty Mercy along, jumping in perfectly into the very place I wanted to photograph! Always good to remember you don't have to go far and you don't have to do much to find Peaceful Medicine. May you find a little corner of it yourself, today...
