Mark VanDyke Photography
Great Smoky Mountains National Park Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail
Water Cascades through a Lush Green Streambed in the Smokies
The Great Smoky Mountains National Park
Accessed via the Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail
Date taken: June 8, 2014
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UPDATE:
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I'll be co-instructing a "Spring in the Smokies" workshop this coming April with Tommy White of Mountains to Sea Workshops. I'm super excited to get back to these amazing mountains to witness the bloom of dogwoods and redbuds as the streams and foliage turn electric green with new growth. If you're interested in the opportunity, check out this link for more information!
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Author John Lane writes, “Sublime in the southern wilderness is always closed in, cramped by trees, cliffs, hills. Everything closes in on you down here, everything, close enough to touch, both the beautiful and the ugly. If you can’t see beauty in closeness you’ll really never see it in the south” (p.83). I’ve thought about this statement frequently as I’ve worked my own way through the wilderness of the Southern Appalachians, often while trying to satisfy and understand my own preferences for what I shoot and view through the camera lens. My first camera was purchased with only one lens, a wide-angle 12-24mm, and I didn’t feel limited in the slightest for many years of shooting around Western North Carolina and the Southern Appalachians. Eventually I felt the tug and purchased a 70-200mm lens, a shift that also occurred after the personal realization that overlook scenics were more desirable by public consumption in general, verifying some light research I was doing previously with evidence-based design principles suggesting that perhaps we’re genetically wired from evolution to prefer and feel safer subconsciously when viewing open vistas versus closed in. However, there is still no doubt for me personally that the most authentic scenics from the Southern Appalachian mountains, despite perhaps the genetic reactions of apprehension and danger I might feel subconsciously, are close, cramped, dark, green, wet and otherwise intimate places within the landscape. While I, too, enjoy the incredible aerial scenics from man-made Lake Jocassee or the many overlooks along the Blue Ridge Parkway that have been cleared of laurel thickets and carved from the sides of rocky mountains, when I see photographs of green streams choked with vegetation and rock I know right away that I’m looking at something genuine, something with its own wild nature, something authentically Appalachian.
Lane goes on to say that “Southern beauty is full of moments and surprises usually associated with nearby places closed off from the world” (p.84). Many folks seem to discount those places that are near a road or populated town as somehow inferior to other harder to reach areas. What I’ve come to understand for myself as a photographer is exactly the opposite, that as author John Lane stated, surprises and moments of amazing happen just as frequently with these nearby places as they do with the harder to reach and further away destinations; the difference is only in mental appreciation of the work and effort to reach the latter.
Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail is a six mile, narrow, one-way loop road just outside of Gatlinburg, Tennessee in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Here visitors will find a vigorous mountain stream gathering waters from Mount LeConte above and bouncing off some of the most green, lush, rocky streambeds I know of! Friend and photographer Dave Allen introduced me to the loop a couple of years back and I’ve been meaning to get in there and concertedly photograph since then. I finally made it happen in early June of this year and this is one of the takes that I came away with!
Great Smoky Mountains National Park Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail
Water Cascades through a Lush Green Streambed in the Smokies
The Great Smoky Mountains National Park
Accessed via the Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail
Date taken: June 8, 2014
Website | Facebook | Google+ | FAA
UPDATE:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
I'll be co-instructing a "Spring in the Smokies" workshop this coming April with Tommy White of Mountains to Sea Workshops. I'm super excited to get back to these amazing mountains to witness the bloom of dogwoods and redbuds as the streams and foliage turn electric green with new growth. If you're interested in the opportunity, check out this link for more information!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Author John Lane writes, “Sublime in the southern wilderness is always closed in, cramped by trees, cliffs, hills. Everything closes in on you down here, everything, close enough to touch, both the beautiful and the ugly. If you can’t see beauty in closeness you’ll really never see it in the south” (p.83). I’ve thought about this statement frequently as I’ve worked my own way through the wilderness of the Southern Appalachians, often while trying to satisfy and understand my own preferences for what I shoot and view through the camera lens. My first camera was purchased with only one lens, a wide-angle 12-24mm, and I didn’t feel limited in the slightest for many years of shooting around Western North Carolina and the Southern Appalachians. Eventually I felt the tug and purchased a 70-200mm lens, a shift that also occurred after the personal realization that overlook scenics were more desirable by public consumption in general, verifying some light research I was doing previously with evidence-based design principles suggesting that perhaps we’re genetically wired from evolution to prefer and feel safer subconsciously when viewing open vistas versus closed in. However, there is still no doubt for me personally that the most authentic scenics from the Southern Appalachian mountains, despite perhaps the genetic reactions of apprehension and danger I might feel subconsciously, are close, cramped, dark, green, wet and otherwise intimate places within the landscape. While I, too, enjoy the incredible aerial scenics from man-made Lake Jocassee or the many overlooks along the Blue Ridge Parkway that have been cleared of laurel thickets and carved from the sides of rocky mountains, when I see photographs of green streams choked with vegetation and rock I know right away that I’m looking at something genuine, something with its own wild nature, something authentically Appalachian.
Lane goes on to say that “Southern beauty is full of moments and surprises usually associated with nearby places closed off from the world” (p.84). Many folks seem to discount those places that are near a road or populated town as somehow inferior to other harder to reach areas. What I’ve come to understand for myself as a photographer is exactly the opposite, that as author John Lane stated, surprises and moments of amazing happen just as frequently with these nearby places as they do with the harder to reach and further away destinations; the difference is only in mental appreciation of the work and effort to reach the latter.
Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail is a six mile, narrow, one-way loop road just outside of Gatlinburg, Tennessee in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Here visitors will find a vigorous mountain stream gathering waters from Mount LeConte above and bouncing off some of the most green, lush, rocky streambeds I know of! Friend and photographer Dave Allen introduced me to the loop a couple of years back and I’ve been meaning to get in there and concertedly photograph since then. I finally made it happen in early June of this year and this is one of the takes that I came away with!