As a landscape photographer, I’m up early – a lot.  Here in the Smokies, almost all the good overlooks are sunrise spots, which necessitates those early mornings (I don’t know what the park has against western facing vistas, but… that’s how it goes!).  Now, I wish it were the case that every one of those early rises was fruitful from a photography standpoint, but unfortunately that’s not the case.  Perhaps, though, the sunrises wouldn’t be special if they were all so beautiful.  Would we start to take them for granted?  In any case, I was fortunate enough to see some beautiful ones this season, and I wanted to share some of them with you.

The sunrise above, as you can see, was an absolute stunner.  I was planning to go shoot from a different location, but as I was driving I could already see color through the trees, and so I doubled back to an overlook I’d already passed and setup there, for fear I’d miss it all while I was driving!  In particular I loved how the clouds almost seemed to make a giant swirl in the sky.  Very unique looking.

Speaking of unique looking, how about that fish shaped cloud in the sky below?  I can’t, not see it now.  Anyway, I captured that one while working with the Tremont Photography Workshop.  We get the pleasure of getting into Cades Cove early one morning of the workshop to shoot sunrise, and this was one of the nicest sunrises from memory.  Just gorgeous.

Finally, the last sunrise below was a sneaker.  The clouds had been sort of blocked up looking on the horizon and it was getting bright enough that I was thinking nothing was going to happen.  I actually started packing up my gear when I noticed some surprise red strips through the clouds.  I quickly set back up, just in time to capture this scene.  It lasted less than a minute and then the color was completely gone!  

Most next week!

–Dan Thompson