
After our Charleston workshops, we returned home for a couple of days, then turned right back around to drive to the Smoky Mountains, which is one of our all time favorite venues. I actually began my photography in Cincinnati, OH as a member of the TriState Photographic Society, and photographed in the Smokies many times learning the craft. This trip, I was really happy to meet some of my friends and mentors from that period, as a group from the TSPS were here lined up to get into Cades Cove at sunrise, as we were.
The weather has been weird all spring. Because of no real winter to speak of, the flowers were extremely early everywhere, including in the Smokies. Hence, no redbud, no dogwoods, and very few flowers, but as in Charleston, there is plenty to do aside from the early spring buds and flowers. The water is running very well, and the intermittent rain keeps the streams full and very photogenic, especially in Tremont!
As illustrated in the previous blogs, I’m pretty much dedicated to infrared these days, so the early spring greens were great for that! And, we had an additional bonus of a rime ice event on Clingman’s dome! Wow, it looked like the trees were all turned upside down and dipped in snow. This probably happens quite a bit up there, but being there when it’s happening is a whole other thing, as the park police tend to err on the side of safety and close down the road to Clingman’s dome if any black ice or perceived danger is on the two land road up the last 7 miles to the mile high dome.
On this particular day, right after a snow, and right after the road was closed off, I decided to take a run at it, hoping the road would be open. Leaving at 0445, with a backup plan to shoot Oconoloftee if the road was closed, we got to the gate…..and it was open! Upon arriving at the parking lot, we noticed at the far end, opposite of where everyone was waiting for the sunrise, all of the trees were white! So, we stayed there and shot the entire time. It was cold. We left the hotel at 50 degrees and arrived at the top of the mountain at 28 degrees! But, we were all dressed for it and everyone had a ball!!
Here’s a few shots from our few days here:


Oh, I almost forgot about our computer nightmare…..
After some minor laptop malfunctions in Charleston, we got home and I worked on the desktop computer, forgetting to look into the problem. Well, I paid for that one! With two days to go before the workshop, my trackpad would let me drag, but not drop….major problem since all of the critique sessions were based on dragging and dropping images…so, we spent a fair amount of time at the Apple Store in Knoxville. After taking the techie’s advice to perform a system reinstall, the problem persisted, necessitating a wiping out of the hard drive and complete reinstallation of software and files. The backup was no problem, but I couldn’t just reinstall everything since the problem was based on software corruption…..soooooo…..I reinstalled clean versions of my main software and had to contact numerous vendors for serial numbers since most of the codes were home……so……long story long…..we’re back in business with only a few programs needing codes, but are on the way. Hopefully, here for our software workshop next week.
Thanks for taking time to read the blog and we’ll see ya online!!
Tony