Roadtrip Images

On one of our last mornings in the park, we were fortunate to witness this misty morning sunrise…

We hadn’t done many sunrises during our recent stay in the Smokies. This one turned out to be a gem. It was cold for this time of year and there was this nice low hanging mist in the valley. This was one of several sunrise locations we had been to before. One of the classic spots is the highest point in the park, Clingman’s Dome. The problem is that it was over an hour drive from our campsite. We had concluded the night before not to head up to Clingman’s so that was out. We had a place in mind but as soon as we saw this one we knew we had to stop. The low hanging mist, the golden glow in the sky that was developing, it was shaping up to be a really nice sunrise. We were the only ones there at first but after we got set up, a few other photographers arrived.

In talking with one of the photographers, he confirmed our decision to stay there. He had just come from the other viewpoint we were thinking of going to that morning. Not liking the composition he left that spot looking for something better. Had he not spotted us he said he wouldn’t have stopped where we were either. Many times you just have to trust your gut. There’s generally not time to run around to several viewpoints while a sunrise is developing. Do some planning so you know where you want to be and then get there early. You may be able to bail and go to plan B if things aren’t working out but probably not enough time for a plan C.

The setup for this shot was pretty straightforward. I used the mist in the valley as a leading line into the image as well as trying to balance the clouds in the sky visually from left to right. There is a concept in composition called visual weight. In this case there are two groups of dark clouds in the sky. I tried to balance them left to right. I tried to keep the visual weight in balance. I use this a lot with my images both with clouds in the sky as well as land based features. Some may call this symmetry which is probably also a decent way to describe it.

I took a number of images as the morning progressed. You never know just when the peak of a sunrise will be. You know the time of sunrise of course but you don’t know what the interaction of the clouds and the light will be. The actual sunrise may be a dud compared to the time just before. I liked the formation of the clouds in this image as well as the golden color of the sky before the sun actually made it over the mountains. This one also had a nice “visual balance” to it.

This is a case where I did most of the adjustments in Adobe Lightroom. It’s a pretty complete image right out of the camera. A couple of graduated filters, one for the sky and one for the foreground balanced the lighting from top to bottom. I pulled up the shadows and dropped the highlights by an equal amount. I also added some dehaze which adds some deep contrast. I did export the file into Photoshop to do some noise reduction on the sky and final sharpening.

We enjoyed our time in the Smoky Mountains and we experienced a wide variety of weather. Spring was still making its way through the region so we had some warm days as well as some snow days. We were here a year ago and experienced the same spring break crowds. The following week was much quieter. We came away with some good images as well as some wildlife shots. The mountains may not have the grandeur of the Tetons but they’re nice in their own more subtle way. One of these years we’ll have to come back in the fall for color change. I’m told it’s quite the show.

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Nikon D810 with Nikkor 24-70mm at 62mm. f/11 at 1/15th of a second. ISO 64.