Well, the leaves are almost gone from the trees here in East Tennessee, so I guess that means it’s time to start sharing the images I’ve been capturing this fall here in the Smokies!  I have to be terribly honest and say I don’t have much of a plan together yet, so I’m just going to start sharing what I have until we all get bored, or I run out of images to share.  How does that sound?

Absent of any real plan, I decided I should just start at the start, which for me this year was right at the beginning of October.  My good friend Bill Lea called me up one day and said he was wanting to go check out the leaf situation over in North Carolina and wanted to know if I wanted to tag along – oh, and he had some rocks he wanted to show me.  The obvious answer there is a resounding yes, so we met up the next morning at 3AM and drove the couple hours over to the spot he knew just in time for sunrise.  

On the way there, he told me about these rock outcroppings that were really neat, and definitely a unique look from what I typically shoot.  I admittedly couldn’t quite visualize what he was meaning until we got there and the light started hitting just right, and I had my “ah ha” moment.  Such a beautiful spot!  To our surprise, this area was past peak already, but we still managed to find some autumnal scenes with left over leaves and beautiful golden light.  There was also an inversion happening that morning with the clouds, which created some really interesting looking scenes (not to mention some challenging shooting situations at times), which you can check out below in the Alternative Perspective section.  Specifically check out the sunrise image where the sun is reflecting off the bottom of the clouds.  So wild looking!

More next week!

–Dan Thompson