Bald River Falls

Sweetie and I took a really nice drive to the Cherohala Skyway in Tellico Plains (Monroe Co., TN) The nice folks at the Visitor's Center
told us about the Bald River Falls which is several miles down a Forest Service Road off the Skyway. It was a beautiful drive and the falls were great. The road crossed the river just below the falls and the bridge gave an excellent shooting position and place to steady my camera. Moving water is great fun (and great frustration) to shoot, as the shutter speed can made a HUGE difference in the appearance of the water. The two closer views illusrate this difference.

The falls are a popular destination for swimming as well. But the location is remote enough that the crowds are nowhere near as large as at the Great Smokies.




















A 1/500 second shutter speed stops the moving water and really coveys its power.











This shot used a 1/10 second shutter speed and gave the water a flowing milky look and I think shows it's motion and grace.   I couldn't decide which I liked better, hence putting both of them on the blog.

Peace,
John

Fireworks in Lafollette 2010

Hey all,

I love the 4th of July. We give thanks for our Nation and enjoy great fireworks.

These were shot at Woodson's Mall in LaFollette. The Cityof Lafollette sponsored te show and it was really nice.

Shooting fireworks can be frustrating, because there is still an element of luck in the shots.

But here are a few things I've learned to improve my chances:

1. use a tripod.

2. long exposures get cool sweeps of color but the ambient glow off the smoke can cloud the image (see pic 3)

3. short expousures get a cool "flower" like effect but are hard to time

4. focus manually, the autofocus has fits trying to get the lights focused before they disappear

5. don't trust the automatic exposure - the dark sky will fool the meter. Fireworks are so bright a low iso will get them and keep your background dark. The image below was made a 1/30 sec and iso 500 but the meter was calling for 3 sec at iso 3200

6. take lots of images at different settings and see what you like (don't be afraid to drop bad shots just learn from the culls)

Here is a HD video of the grand finale shot with my Nikon D90

Stay safe and have a great 4th.

Peace,

John

Behold the chicken

Okay, yes it's a little ...
odd to post a picture of a chicken on my photography blog.

However, this is the first chicken off our new smoker, and it looked so good I just wanted to share [the picture not the chicken :) ] with all of you


Got to go, time for supper.

Peace,
John