I thought I would end the Cataloochee series this week with solitary tree I found there. You’re probably asking yourself… “does he just going looking for trees like this?” …yes, yes I do. 🙂 They just jump out at me, I don’t know why.
This particular shot was towards the end of our shoot there in that section of the park. The sun was climbing quickly over the ridge and lighting up the tops of all the trees. As I had mentioned earlier in the series, that section of the park was really behind as far as foliage this year, and so it looks in this shot to be the dead of winter. The tree in question hadn’t even started to bud yet. What was particularly funny though was that I had been drawn to this spot originally because I was seeing, what I thought were elk standing in the road and I thought it would be cool to get the sun behind them… turned out I was seeing turkeys. How I mistook turkeys with their feathers fanned up for the rump of an elk, I’ll never know… but it at least got us here, just in time to get this shot.
–Dan Thompson