As I’m going through the photos from the workshop this fall, I still don’t have a sense of how many I will want to show, so this is Part one of…a few. We’ll see. I don’t want to needlessly string it out, but I haven’t been shooting up here much since I’ve been focusing on jewelry making. Plus stick season…bleah. Snow now, please.
Anyway…the workshop was centered around waterfalls, but as with many things in nature, you can’t really count on it and a lot of them were at a pretty low flow (I don’t like the sound of that), and there were some other issues. But we’ll get to that later.
A bit of the lovely shoreline above Burgess Falls in Tennessee. Nice that the rock is so flat you can just walk out and put the tripod almost everywhere.
So I did, I walked around and just tried for the best. With higher water levels I’d have been more confined. There is no way to easily shoot the falls proper as the old trail has either been dismantled or it’s fallen off the cliff face to crash below. If there was a way down, the leaders weren’t telling so I was up above with other folks. Funny though, once I wandered up this way, others followed. It wouldn’t be the last time.
Compositions were hard to come by and so I settled for what I thought I could work with. I really liked the bendy tree above, but the blank, bright sky made framing difficult. The reflection below made the view to the top of the falls ok, but I still wish the light had more nuance. What can you do?
We eventually headed back toward the cars where we stopped at some cascades to see what could be had. With the bluebird skies, it was time for a longer lens and some detail work. I wasn’t terribly inspired, but I put on my water shoes and waded in.
At times the light that filtered through the remaining canopy was pretty magical and I did my best to work with it. Little did I know this would be a location I wasn’t rushed off of. Of course when I wasn’t inspired I had time, when I was really jazzed and wanted to spend time playing, I had to leave. Grrr.
Overall it was ok, but I’ve done a few workshops with these guys before and I haven’t been so negative in my feedback form as I was this time. It isn’t all on them though, I think that I’m too advanced a photographer as they are set up for new or intermediate people. There were lots of questions about filters, tripods, which lenses to bring, shutter speeds with moving water and other basic stuff that I already know. Getting the “main attraction” framed, composed and shot wasn’t difficult or time consuming for me. What I needed was more leisure to be creative and explore and I didn’t get that when and where I wanted. Quite irritating.
And I think they could have done a better job with alternatives when water was low. A couple of times we were at sites I’d rate as a big, fat ZERO for shooting and a huge waste of time. Lots of driving with very little to show for it. And what they did come up with was a little limiting, if interesting, like these tent graves which are apparently specific to very rural Tennessee –
Go ahead and search for it. There seems to be no real explanation for them other than they are strange and peculiar. During our rides through the countryside, I noticed them in some other cemeteries, but not all of them. I think they date from the late 19th and early 20th century and that’s about it. My theory is that some kids cobbled together something like this as a joke or something to do and it got adopted as something worth doing. Seems rather odd and has no structural or other effect on the burial.
And there were a few stones hand carved like this one. Many had an odd mixture of mostly upper case letters, with a few lower included. This one only uses lower case Ds. Or should I say ds. Ella had her last Christmas and then off this mortal coil. I wonder if it was a good one or if she was too sick.
This next one is a church window, but it wasn’t anywhere near the cemetery. From the street it wasn’t too interesting even if it was peeling and sort of charming. Absolutely no one approached the structure at all, but I did and found this reflection in the window that I quite liked. That little bit of vine growing from the bottom sill is pretty great, too.
This is what was actually adjacent to the cemetery; a working cattle ranch with a fabulous barn. If it wasn’t for the trees though I doubt I’d have taken this shot at all.
Not sure what kind of trees they are, but the color was pretty great and the lowering sun kicked it up another notch.
So I guess this is a pretty grumbly post and I’m sorry. Just still wrangling with how cheated I felt about certain things. Bear with me. The photos are good and I think I came away with a few things that I’m happy with.
Leave a comment