Spring Photo Tour

Sublime Spring Getaway

We had the occasion to slip away for a ten day photo tour and quickly packed and headed out for the Tennessee/North Carolina mountains.

Opportunity was with us as we found the hollows, foothills and coves bursting with spring colors, vibrant and strewn with flowers of every imaginable type.

Each day we monitored the weather and choose a course based on where we expected the best photographic conditions would be. This often changed hourly and we set no particular goals but through our research prior to the trip would modify our course considerably to take advantage of the current and expected conditions. We often covered several hundred miles and were blessed often of being in the right place at the right time.

Amongst these opportunities we managed to hike an average of six miles each day into some of the most wonderfully visual locations one can imagine.

Very soul satisfying!

One night thunderstorms roiled the mountains and caused quite a show. This tapered off during nautical twilight. We determined to visit a little known location where we expected a valley of considerable fog and opportunities as the aurora of dawn and a wonderful sunrise commenced. We were not disappointed.

See below an image of Val capturing the mood of ghostly trees just after sunrise.

Val working from our office
Val working from our office

Not to be left aside here is an image Val captured at a place we deemed “Snake Falls”:

Dusty studies composition
Dusty studies composition

We had us a time.

One day we hiked into a mountain valley that we found out from a local teacher we met along another trail. It was unmarked but locally was known for it’s immense diversity of wild flowers.

We found the trail without much mishap and as we slowly hiked into a mountain glade the place came alive with color and beauty. Half of the day flew by as we tried to capture and enjoy both visually and with macro lens.

Mountain Glade Floral wonder
Mountain Glade Floral wonder

The last couple of days were spent in a leisurely drive along the Blue Ridge Parkway, up through the length of West Virginia and home.

We have completed our fundamental post-image visualization and have developed two (2) new on line galleries that we are pleased with.

Our continued Seasonal series now has our latest Spring Collection

This art work collection represents numerous moments of fleetingly illuminated scenes whose light quality and gestures appeared and were quickly gone. We are pleased to have been able to capture so many of these as close to our pre-visualized interpretations as possible.

We are very pleased to add another new gallery based on a working project of Appalachian Pioneers

Our Appalachian Pioneers Gallery is an on-going work of satisfying gratification as Dusty was raised in a rural Appalachian area and many of the images included here relate back to his fore fathers and their families. We often got the feeling when capturing these places of the spirits of family members and their simplistic pleasures and hardships inherent in such life styles prior to today’s world of constant change. Many of these families experienced numerous generations with very little variations in the yearly routines. Later, as change did occur, their pace was slow and gradual. We felt that these families lived on the brink of tomorrow and the edge of yesterday!

Often one harkens back to such affirmation of life!

Val & Dusty – May 2014

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