How about some fall photography!?  I’m calling an audible this week and changing things up a bit.  I had originally planned to share some more night images while I continued shooting the fall colors, but between a somewhat lackluster fall color season and my busy travel schedule, I think at this point I’ve got what I’ve got.  So before we get too far afield from fall colors, I thought I’d kick off my fall photography series this week, instead of waiting any longer.

I don’t know why this is the case exactly, though I have some guesses, but in my years of photographing the streams in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park, I’ve only witnessed foggy stream scenes 2 or 3 times.  You can imagine my delight, then, when I showed up to find Elkmont completely socked in one morning.  It was an absolute dream, and in fact, you’ll see a couple of posts from that particular morning in the coming weeks.  It was just a spectacular time to be in the park.  I had already been planning to shoot the streams, but I ended up walking up the Little River trail a couple miles, essentially just following the fog until the sun finally broke free of the clouds and it was time to go home.  I actually surprised myself when I started walking out at just how far in I had gone – I was definitely lost in the moment!

The image above was my favorite of the session.  I loved how the fog really hung in the trees and naturally backlit the trees in front of me.  As it turns out, this was peak color for this section of the stream, as you’ll see for sure in the images below.

More next week!

–Dan Thompson