Amy and I just returned from a week long vacation that involved a drive down the Blue Ridge Parkway on our way to our ultimate destination of Andersonville, Georgia to visit Amy’s parents.  This week’s blog will cover the 2 days of traveling spent on the parkway.  Day one was Saturday October 18 and we spent that day traversing the northernmost part of the blue ridge known as the Skyline Drive which is entirely enclosed in the Shenandoah National Park.  We spent the night in Front Royal, Va. just outside of the north entrance to the park. 

We began the trip in the dark with hopes of catching sunrise at one of the numerous overlooks along the drive.  I’ve played around with the image chosen to represent the many I took of the sunrise and decided to go ahead and use an HDR version of the image.  I tend to shy away from HDR because it tends to make images too surreal and this particular image is on the borderline of being too much, but I’ll let you decide.  I also couldn’t decide whether or not to make this the featured image or not.

As we continued our drive the sky was a mix of clouds and sun and the clouds gradually took over more of the sky as the day progressed.  This did, however, lend itself to some rather dramatic skies but did not give the foliage that extra pop that only bright sun can do.  If one were to stop and spend just 5 minutes at each overlook, the drive would end up taking all week so we chose to “over look some of the overlooks”.  Also, as you can imagine, the views from these overlooks were spectacular and the foliage along most of the drive was at or near peak.  Picking and choosing when to stop and get out to take pictures was often driven by the number of people already at a given overlook.

We stopped to take a hike at milepost 50 that encompassed a 4.5-mile looping hike.  We started at the trailhead for Dark Hollow Falls and continued beyond the falls to the Rose River Loop Trail that includes Rose River falls.  This hike along the forest streams lent itself to numerous opportunities to photograph moving water.   I enjoy this type of photography and am always looking for the perfect composition of the surrounding forest and the river or stream.  None of my shots really left me with the feeling that I had something special but I’ve including a couple in this posting for you to enjoy. 

During this part of our hike I did have a chance to experience the goodness in people.  I use a camera strap from BlackRapid that is very comfortable for walking around with camera ready.  One of the unique features of this camera strap is that it attaches to the bottom of the camera in the tripod mount hole.  This means, however, that you must remove the strap in order to mount the camera on the tripod.  When we began the looping part of the trail I decided to leave the camera on the tripod and carry it down stream, as I knew I would make several stops along the way to attempt to get that forest stream shot I was after.  About a third of the way around the loop I realized I had left my strap behind.  We decided to keep going and hope to find it when we completed the loop.  As we approached the spot where I was certain I had left the strap, it was hanging from a trail

sign waiting for my return.

After our hike we had lunch at the Byrd Visitor Center and then resumed our drive to Charlottesville.  The late afternoon skies were mostly overcast and only occasionally did the sun peek through the clouds and brighten up the foliage.  We continued to make stops along the way and enjoy the scenery.  Once in Charlottesville we checked into our hotel and walked across the street to a nice Mexican restaurant for dinner.

Before resuming our drive down the parkway on Sunday, we spent the morning touring Monticello (see last week’s blog).  During our afternoon drive from Charlottesville to the Meadows of Dan, where we would spend two nights enjoying the area, the sun was bright and the skies were clear.  This made for much more vibrant colors in the photographs and gave us the opportunity to take in many spectacular views from the numerous overlooks along the way.  

As we approached our destination for the day the sun began to set and, like the sunrise picture from the first day, it was only appropriate to capture sunset on the second day. 

We arrived at the Woodberry Inn shortly after sunset to check in.  Once we settled into our room we walked back to the main building of the Inn for a late dinner and some relaxation. 

To see more pictures from the trip you can visit this album on flickr.

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Monticello from the back yard



Jefferson's headstone

Amy and I are on a road trip to Georgia to visit her parents.  We spent yesterday driving the Skyline Drive and today we visited Montecello, the beloved home of Thomas Jefferson, and then continued are drive south along the Blue Ridge Parkway.  The numerous photos taken along the drives will need to be worked on at home to do them justice so a future post to this blog will cover the incredible overlook views that we have seen over the past two days.  The more casual photos taken while visiting Montecello will be the subject of this weeks blog (my tools on the road are limited).

The main picture for this week's blog is a shot of Jeffersons house from the side most popular and most familiar to people.  This side, however, happens to be the back of the house and the picture is taken from the vast back yard of the grounds.  The front of the house is not as dramatic nor as famous.

Jefferson's vineyard and the view to the east.

We arrived at the homestead at roughly 8:30 when they opened so that we could get through the tour and get back on the road in order to stick with our agenda.  We selected the 9:50 time slot for the house tour and chose to walk from the visitors center to the mansion as opposed to taking the complimentary shuttle ride.  The path leads through the woods and past the cemetery where Jefferson and his family are buried.  We came into the grounds of the house from the back and walked along the gardens and Mulberry row, where most of Jefferson's slaves worked.  The estate sits atop a mountain which presented challenges to Jefferson in regards to farming and as such he created a couple of terraces to grow his garden on level ground.  He also had a small vineyard and orchards on the vast acreage that Jefferson inherited from his father.

After we finished walking through the garden we walked along the eastern side of the mansion where a lot of activity occurred during Jefferson's time. The cook's quarters and the kitchen was located in this area as well as other food preparation and preservation areas existed. The smoke house, where meats where hung for curring, presented a good

Actual Front Entrance to Monticello

challenge for my new camera and its ability to take pictures in low light. There was very little light in the smoke room and I could barely make out the fact that some fake meats were hanging from the rafters. I set the ISO on my camera to its maximum and took a picture.  Once we finished walking through the areas where the food, beer and wines were stored and prepared it was time for our tour of the house.  The regular ticket, that costs $25, gets you a tour of the first floor area of the house and photography is not allowed inside the house. 
The tour was interesting and was actually the second time I had been on the tour (Katie and I visited Montecello in 2007 when she moved to NC State for a summer). 

The "stove" in the kitchen at Monticello

Some other interesting things about the house the kitchen that was pretty well equipped for the time.  It turns out that Jefferson acquired quite a taste for French cuisine during his time as minister to France from 1784-1789 and as such meals at Monticello included French cooking.  The "stove" area of the kitchen had several burners to allow multiple items to be cooking at once.

Illustration of the wine dumb waiter

Another interesting feature of the house that one would guess Jefferson also brought back from France was a wine dumb waiter.  The wine cellar was directly below the dining room and a dumb waiter was setup in the wall along the fireplace to allow the simultaneous delivery of a fresh bottle of wine and the return of an empty bottle.  This is a modern convenience that I think most of us need in our own homes.

Once the 40 minute tour was completed we made the return visit to our car and resumed our drive south along the Blue Ridge Parkway.  Photos from the drive will be included in a future blog posting.

Butterfly in the garden.

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On Sunday morning Amy and I had planned to take a bike ride.  The weather was questionable and the temperatures were in the low 40's so we decided to check out the hiking trails in the local county park.  Roughly 3 miles north of us is Northampton Park with hiking trails and other attractions that we have never really taken advantage of so I figured it was a perfect opportunity to go take a walk in the crisp autumn air and play around with some more camera gear and accessories.  For those that have been following the blog regularly, the Super Moon posting with the farm was photographed in this park.

Trail in Northampton Park

While cleaning out some old camera bags and in particular the one I had my Nikon D100 stored in I came across a lens that I must have purchased in the early days of owning the D100 or even before then when I was still occasionally shooting film on my Nikon 8008s film camera.  This newly rediscovered lens is a Tamron 28-300 zoom lens.  It is not a DX lens which means it will cover the full frame sensor of my D750 through out this relatively large range of zoom.  I figured I would put this on my new camera, carry my new GPS tracker device to log my every move for eventual merging into the photos taken while walking the park trails.
The weather held out and we had occasional breaks in the clouds where the sun would shine and brighten the colors of the trees that were just beginning to change.  I would say the leaves was probably at 30-40% changed, if that.  We chose to hike a trail that went along a stream but the stream did not really have a lot of water in it so it did not offer much in the way of photographic subject matter.  It seems that the recent rains we had only managed to make sections of the trail extremely muddy and did nothing to raise the level of the stream.

Leaves changing on the trees from top to bottom.

We parked our vehicle in the parking lot of Springdale Farm and found the trail head for the looping trails we wanted to take.  I quickly learned one of the things I had disliked about the lens I was using. Its speed of focus is extremely slow as it does not contain an ultra sonic motor for focusing like that found in all modern Nikkor Lenses and in most modern lenses by other manufacturers as well.  This would not be an issue for the hike unless I wanted to try and capture some animals or birds at the long end of the zoom (300 mm) and I needed it to focus quickly.

Checking out the Macro capability of the Tamron lens.

The other thing I noted about this lens as we were walking is that it claimed to be macro capable.  This prompted me to stop and try it out on some wild flowers along the trail and in the fields where we walked.  Curious as to when I last used this lens and how often had I used it in the past I used the meta-data capabilities of Adobe Lightroom to search my library of >40,000 pictures and only found ~600 pictures taken with this lens.  The most recent one prior to this hike was in 2008 and was taken by Amy as we hiked Mendon ponds with my then new D300 and she used the D100 with this lens on it.

B&W conversion of the dead trees in Northampton Park.

One thing we learned about the trails in Northampton Park is that they are not well marked at all and this became an issue at times. We were not too worried about getting lost because the section of the park we were in was relatively small and surrounded by major roads (see map image).

One particular area of the hike was completely covered in fallen trees.  I tried to capture the eerie feeling we had while among the fallen trees and didn't really quite achieve the results I wanted.  Converting one of the images to black and white helped some.

Results of GPS tracking and tagging my photos.  Yellow tag is where
this week's featured photo was taken from.

Overall it was a pleasant hike and I was able to reacquaint myself with an old lens (not sure I'll use it that much going forward) and tried out my new GPS tracker (results are shown here).

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Amy and I decided to take a drive to Watkins Glen on Sunday morning to walk the gorge and take some pictures with my new Nikon D750.  The weather promised to be gorgeous and it did not disappoint.  We left early in the morning in order to get to the park before too many people arrived.  This is important if you plan to visit Watkins Glen State Park with the intent of taking some pictures beyond the basic snapshot.  If you arrive much past 10:00 AM you will not be able to get a picture absent of people like those posted in this week's blog.  As mentioned in last week's blog, my lens choices for the new full frame camera at the wide range is limited to some older prime lenses that I've had for some time.  All shots this week were taken with my Nikkor AF 24 MM D lens.  This week's featured shot is of one of my favorite locations in the park.

Every time I look at pictures like the one above (I've shot this scene a few times before) I am reminded of scenes from the Lord of the Rings movies for some reason.  This image is an HDR composition of 5 frames taken at ISO 100 and f9.  Exposure times ranged from 1.3 seconds to 20 seconds (it is actually relatively dark in the gorge, even in bright morning sunshine).

It was a bit early in the season for much foliage in the finger lakes regions and as such there wasn't much drama or color to the pictures.  In the gorge, the foliage doesn't really play much of a role in the shots but when the paths and the many stairs (Amy read there are almost 1000 steps on the trail) are covered with fallen leaves it makes for more interesting photos.  Once we reached the northern end of the gorge we needed to ascend the majority of those ~1000 steps in order to reach the upper visitors center and rest rooms.

We decided to walk the Indian trail back for more variety and arrived at our vehicle by 10:45 AM.  My warning and concern about the crowds and getting there early proved to be true as there were several vehicles idling in the parking lot looking for departing visitors that would free up a spot for them.

We drove back along the western shore of Seneca Lake and stopped at the Glenora Wine Cellars and the Veraisons Restaurant for lunch.  We were relatively early for lunch and as such had the place to ourselves.  We sat had outdoor seating that overlooked their vineyard and Seneca Lake in the distance.  It was a wonderful ending to a wonderful morning in the finger lakes region.

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