For the past two weeks, we’ve been exploring the Smokies in late autumn, as seen in black and white.  I’m guessing that black and white isn’t the first thing that comes to mind when people think about the Smokies in fall – me either frankly – but once the leaves and color are gone, there is still beauty to be found.

If you’ve seen my stream photography before, you’ll perhaps have noticed that I have a certain way of shooting streams.  I’m typically in the water, and the camera is low to the water.  This past fall, however, I challenged myself to see things a bit differently.  Rather than hiking up streams and exploring off trail locations, I decided to go to the “post card” spots to see what I could find.  For the most part, I tried to work in the areas that you’ll typically find a collection of photographers during the busy seasons, but other than that, I didn’t put any rules on myself.  I simply asked myself, what do I see here, and what speaks to me.  After multiple outings, these are the images I liked the most.  To me these are classic Smokies scenes, and are perhaps familiar, but as I often tell my students, that doesn’t make them bad.

For the scene above, I shot at a popular spot, just below the bridge at the end of Tremont Rd.  This is looking across the Middle Prong, up at Thunderhead prong.  I don’t typically shoot water flowing from side to side in the frame, but what I liked about the result here is the barricade it creates between the viewer and Thunderhead Prong in the distance.  This definitely feels like a spot where you wouldn’t want to cross!

Below are two more classic scenes from the Tremont area.  The first is from “the spot”, which is a very popular bend in the river that can be photographed right from the road.  The second is looking off the bridge at the end of Tremont Rd.  For both scenes, the flow of the water was high, which makes this stream seem fairly ominous.  For both, the stream acts as a leading line, of sorts, which guides the viewers eye off to the distance.  In both of these, I love how the infrared renders the rhododendron leaves to be white – it almost makes it feel like a winter scene to me!

More next week! 

–Dan Thompson