eevy24012
Gregory Morning
I like a shot like this, for there was a heavy due to be paid in getting it. A 4.5 mile hike up a steep mountain with all the stuff needed for an overnight stay plus the heavy camera gear. The hike up was in hot and humid weather and me and my friend were both half sick from the effort but kept on chugging. After the struggles of the first 3 miles or so, we got to finish off the last of it avoiding the trail and its 6 inch deep muck torn up by horses and pigs. Not as easy walking rocks and 45 degree banks for lack of a passible trail. Near the camp we were met by a steady parade of day trippers leaving warning us to watch out for the feral hogs they were seeing, and one guy told of a rattlesnake strike and narrow miss.
We arrived at camp a 1/2 mile short of the bald with azalea and set up tents and made dinner. I flushed a bear coming and going from camp to bald, and pretty much assumed they would be hanging out around us all night waiting for someone to get sloppy with food. It was also a rather warm night despite nearly 5000 ft of elevation, making sleep difficult. A deer was hanging out close to my tent at one point, from inside assuming bear brought an uneasy feeling. The shortest days of the year afford little time for sleep and photography anyway, and we were a few days into the trip prior to this endeavor so little sleep was nothing new at this point.
The bald itself is not an easy place to find great compositions anyway with the azalea shrubs scattered among the grass on top, but quickly giving way to tall trees a little down the sides. This mostly knocks out the nearest lower elevations that can be seen with detail in a photo, leaving distant mountains for a backdrop save a few gaps here and there. No chance for a sunset and azalea combo due to trees, and it was always fairly breezy. The morning when this shot was taken was heavy wind, requiring some extreme camera settings to help tame it...along with finding an interesting more sheltered area. We were the only photographers here this night, and I suppose that is the case almost all of them. The folks we shared camp with were hardcore backpackers just there for the trail and their trek, most not that interested in the unique setting rolling out all around them.
Gregory Bald is a truly unique place of the entire world really. I opted to skip a poor bloom on Roan this year and fulfill a fantasy to stay in this place instead. These azalea are not such fickle bloomers and put on a great show. I know as I move more into my 50’s that being able to put forth the effort to get places like this is likely a lot more in the past than waiting in the future, so that makes it all the more special. I have a lost feeling inside of me knowing that at this time the bloom has come, and want to get back, but circumstances will not allow it this year for the camp has made the park’s closed for bear activity list. It troubles me to know that making this list often becomes habit for the park, so in the future this trip could become more or less impossible in prime lighting.
This is the type of photo that moves me, much more for what it took to get it rather than the scene itself. It was always be unforgettable to me for that reason.
I have been bracketing exposures for later blending for quite some time, but the conditions here made that mostly unusable. So I took a middle exposure here and duplicated it, processed one for sky and the other for ground and merged them with luminosity masking.
Gregory Morning
I like a shot like this, for there was a heavy due to be paid in getting it. A 4.5 mile hike up a steep mountain with all the stuff needed for an overnight stay plus the heavy camera gear. The hike up was in hot and humid weather and me and my friend were both half sick from the effort but kept on chugging. After the struggles of the first 3 miles or so, we got to finish off the last of it avoiding the trail and its 6 inch deep muck torn up by horses and pigs. Not as easy walking rocks and 45 degree banks for lack of a passible trail. Near the camp we were met by a steady parade of day trippers leaving warning us to watch out for the feral hogs they were seeing, and one guy told of a rattlesnake strike and narrow miss.
We arrived at camp a 1/2 mile short of the bald with azalea and set up tents and made dinner. I flushed a bear coming and going from camp to bald, and pretty much assumed they would be hanging out around us all night waiting for someone to get sloppy with food. It was also a rather warm night despite nearly 5000 ft of elevation, making sleep difficult. A deer was hanging out close to my tent at one point, from inside assuming bear brought an uneasy feeling. The shortest days of the year afford little time for sleep and photography anyway, and we were a few days into the trip prior to this endeavor so little sleep was nothing new at this point.
The bald itself is not an easy place to find great compositions anyway with the azalea shrubs scattered among the grass on top, but quickly giving way to tall trees a little down the sides. This mostly knocks out the nearest lower elevations that can be seen with detail in a photo, leaving distant mountains for a backdrop save a few gaps here and there. No chance for a sunset and azalea combo due to trees, and it was always fairly breezy. The morning when this shot was taken was heavy wind, requiring some extreme camera settings to help tame it...along with finding an interesting more sheltered area. We were the only photographers here this night, and I suppose that is the case almost all of them. The folks we shared camp with were hardcore backpackers just there for the trail and their trek, most not that interested in the unique setting rolling out all around them.
Gregory Bald is a truly unique place of the entire world really. I opted to skip a poor bloom on Roan this year and fulfill a fantasy to stay in this place instead. These azalea are not such fickle bloomers and put on a great show. I know as I move more into my 50’s that being able to put forth the effort to get places like this is likely a lot more in the past than waiting in the future, so that makes it all the more special. I have a lost feeling inside of me knowing that at this time the bloom has come, and want to get back, but circumstances will not allow it this year for the camp has made the park’s closed for bear activity list. It troubles me to know that making this list often becomes habit for the park, so in the future this trip could become more or less impossible in prime lighting.
This is the type of photo that moves me, much more for what it took to get it rather than the scene itself. It was always be unforgettable to me for that reason.
I have been bracketing exposures for later blending for quite some time, but the conditions here made that mostly unusable. So I took a middle exposure here and duplicated it, processed one for sky and the other for ground and merged them with luminosity masking.