I’ve heard it called the “Dan Lawson tree” – after the historic Cades Cove house that it sits adjacent from. I’ve heard it called the “Bill Lea tree” – after my friend and fellow photographer who arguably made the tree famous through his work. Generally speaking though, you can simply call it “the tree”, and most local photographers will know exactly the one you’re talking about in Cades Cove. Whatever you call it, it’s a gorgeous specimen with a nice shape, and long reaching branches.
Along with it’s fame, you could safely assume that it has been photographed to death – and you’d be right. Even just on this blog alone I can think of at least three other images I’ve shared of it, if not a half dozen, and I’ve even shared another night image of it, though it was pretty early on in my exploration of the night sky. With that in mind, as I was mulling over the subject, I did have to ask myself if I was going to shoot it AGAIN. And if so, what would I do differently this time to create something unique. After some time planning and a failed attempt at capturing it, I came up with the image you see here.
This portion of the Milky Way is oriented like this later in the fall, right at night time. You’ll note that it features many of the same objects as last week’s image, but oriented differently, as the timing was must earlier in the night. How I chose to illuminate the tree, along with the orientation of the night sky and the direction the camera are facing lend this image – I think – a decidedly different feel at least than the other image I have of it, and hopefully is unique for you as well.
More next week!
–Dan Thompson