Finally!

It finally happened. I finally got my camera outside and created some new images. Yay! I recently looked through my files and realized that my last shooting session was back at Christmas time during an amazing snow. Whoa. That’s a long time!

Even though I haven’t been out with my camera, I’ve been super busy. I recently decided to tackle deep sky astroimaging. Enough said. I’d hope to have some astroimages to share at this point, but the learning curve is steeper than I thought. Someday I’ll have some astroimages to share. For now, I consider the time I spend on astroimaging as an investment that will pay off in the future. At least I hope! I also just wrapped up teaching my first night photography class. That was great fun. It was a ton of work and I just didn’t have time for anything else.

Notwithstanding all that busyness, it was really great to get to the Smokies again with my camera. On the day I went, the leaf canopy was its infancy and getting more dense with each warm spring day. The water level in the streams was also quite high. The combination of few leaves and high water created the perfect combination for monochrome images. It was a partly cloudy day, which created constantly changing light conditions as the sun occasionally went behind the clouds and spotted the land with light and dark areas of illumination. Those are my favorite conditions for photographing streams in the forest! An added challenge was the wind. Overall, a lot of fun!

My day in the forest reminded me how rewarding the simple act of creation is for me. It’s no surprise to anyone active in creative endeavors, but creating new images and new things in general is an absolute necessity for a rewarding existence on this planet. I needed the reminder!

Here are four of my favorite images from my day in the forest. Enjoy!