Weather Atop the Blue Ridge

Just two hours and a few miles of travel on the Blue Ridge Parkway can reveal dramatic changes in weather and the look of the landscape.

There was fog and haze, and most of the trees had not yet revealed their most intense autumn colors (this was October 7).  However, I briefly caught sight of a patch of color through a gap in the mid-ground foliage, and a long lens concentrated the view.

This fog bank followed the fence line for awhile.

My goal that afternoon was to hike to the Cascades in Jeffress Park, and I was rewarded with nice conditions at the upper and lower falls overlooks.  It was cloudy (and sometimes drizzly), which kept the contrast of the white water manageable.

I got my viewpoint very close to ground level at a feeder stream on the way back.

Here are views from inside and outside the Jesse Brown cabin in E. B. Jeffress Park.

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How Bar Harbor got its name

First full day in "Bah Hahbah"... some drizzle, fog and mist - yum!

One goal for the day was to cross to Bar Island.  This island is actually connected to Bar Harbor during low tide periods.  A sand bar is exposed for up to two hours before and after minimum tide.  Four hours is ample time to cross, hike to the peak of Bar Island, and return to the mainland without fear of being stranded for ten hours.

Shells abound on the bar.  I watched a gull come in for a landing and wondered what it had spotted.

Here's the answer to that question:

At the edge of Bar Island, a lot of people were poking around, exploring, and occasionally adding to the rock cairns.

This pair was impressive.

Next came the hike to the peak.  It was very enjoyable, but not particularly photogenic.  At the top, though, I found lovely scenes of the harbor and distant islets.

Here's a "secret" spy's eye view of Bar Harbor, with Cadillac Mountain in the background.

Returning to sea level, I made a panorama of the area to show you how the bar connects things, about an hour before it gets covered by the rising tide.

On the return crossing, I focused more on the evanescent landscape of the sand bar.

Walking back to lodgings on the other side of town, I felt a sense of wonder that quite a bit of wild, unspoiled, fascinating nature can be reached on foot from a place as citified as Bar Harbor.

Easing my emotional return to civilization, I looked for odd things to possibly photograph.  I found a candidate in a building apparently slated for demolition.  To circle back to the cemetery door from two days earlier, here is a door on that building.

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Foggy morning

An unusual heat wave in the middle of winter caused Raleigh to be socked in with fairly heavy fog Friday night. This morning (Saturday), though the fog wasn't extremely dense, it persisted through several hours of daylight. I headed for a favorite "urban-rural" area to see what I could see.

Moderate fog can be deceptive. Things nearby look quite clear. It's not at all like the "pea soup" experience of almost losing your hand held in front of your face. Still, the distant parts of a landscape can completely disappear, and most interestingly for images in a two dimensional medium like photography, there is a kind of gradient of clarity. Objects become gradually more diffuse, less detailed, and less colorful when they are further away. It's the same as the basic principle of aerial perspective, only turbocharged by the fog. I wanted to see if I could use these conditions to add a little something to my photos.

The first image is an establishing shot, to give you an idea of the area where I began shooting. This is a stitched panorama of ten overlapping shots. The sky was completely uniform and uninteresting, so I filled it (by my choice of where I stood) with tree branches.

Like a cloudy day, only maybe even more so, a foggy day reflects light in all directions. Some light entered the usually impenetrable shade of the enclosed patio on the end of the old house.

The white fence and distant trees show the signs of aerial perspective.

It was easy for the camera to see into the shade, thanks to the fill light from the fog.

Joggers and walkers appeared out of the fog and disappeared into it.

The birds are fairly clear, while the fencing behind them is half obscured. I think the grass adds a three dimensional effect to the picture simply because it is so much more distinct and saturated with color in the foreground than in the background.

This detail shot doesn't have any obvious characteristics of fog, but the soft, even light did bring out the color contrasts of the awning and the emergency fire gear.

I moved on to the Raleigh Greenway, where this bridge and the trees were complemented by the perspective enhancements of the mist.

A treehouse in the woods! What a fun place for a young person to hide out on a day like this!

As I headed back, others were heading out for some exercise. Here we have six legs jogging into the mysterious distance.

(Lenses used: Canon 16-35/2.8, 24-105/4, 70-200/2.8 - a flexible trio of overlapping zooms, two of them with image stabilization. Among other things, this enabled the slow shutter speed of the last shot, allowing enough motion blur to lend some dynamism to the dog and man.)

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