If you’ve spent much time with Holly and I together, you’ll know that we like to give each other a hard time. It’s all in good fun of course, but if one or the other of us ever says anything stupid, you can bet it will come up again. This is one such occasion.
This Fall we were blessed with some AMAZING colors here in East Tennessee and it seemed like the reds were particularly vibrant this year. My friend Paul and I were driving around Cades Cove one evening, trying find a subject when I spotted this dogwood sitting out in a field there. It was so red that it jumped out at you. At the time, the lighting wasn’t right for it and so we kept going. The tree, though, left an impression on me.
A few days later, Holly was hanging around with my friend Steve and I as we were photographing in Tremont. Steve and I began strategizing, as we typically do, about where we might go the following day for sunrise. Steve, who is always better prepared for such conversations than I am, said that the weather conditions might be favorable for fog the next day in Cades Cove… maybe even too much fog. As photography goes, some fog is excellent to make scenes interesting, but too much fog can mean you walk away with nothing. Traditionally I tend to like a little more fog than my fellow photographers would put up with though, so I made the comment that I have never been one to be afraid of too much fog, and so that settled it. Cades Cove for sunrise it was.
…Aaaand unbeknownst to me, I had given Holly some new material. As we hoped in the car, Holly began referring to me as the “fog warrior”, since I wasn’t afraid of fog. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, that’s how it starts
The following day, as predicted, there was loads of fog in Cades Cove. Steve and I were driving around, looking for subjects, when I remembered the bright red dogwood. I mentioned that, if nothing else, we could go work on that. When we arrived at the field the tree was barely visible from the road. We walked out into the mist and began shooting. Just as we were finishing up, the sun poked through the clouds overhead as the fog pushed back from the tree, and the scene pictured above appeared. It’s exactly what I had been hoping for.
As Steve and I walked back to the car, he confided in me, “Man, I sure am glad you were here this morning, because I’d have been shaking in my boots with all this fog around, and no fog warrior!” 🙂
–Dan Thompson