Summer Days
While the haze of Appalachia can be difficult to work with for certain, but when it rolls in thick like this, even partially cloudy skies can create an incredible atmospheric image. When I began searching for the image I captured on this day, I spent a lot of time traveling up and down the parkway, indecision ruled the day. Plenty of missed opportunities as I attempted to find a place to set up shop, eventually I settled. The clouds had mostly drifted away, the sky was bright, the sun in full view of the composition I wanted. I resolved to wait for blue hour and capture the after light for the day. In the end though, this image reminded me of the first times I set eyes on these beautiful mountains on the hot southern days, not the stark moody scene I so often crave, but this simple example of light, playing off the soft blue haze.
The truth of your images are often a tough pill to swallow as you develop your eye for the scene. You understand, for the most part anyway, that you can;t control the light, or weather, only prepare for it. This was the case for me on this day. I worked diligently to find a stormy cloud covered scene that can hide some of the haze, but it was an imperfect solution. The real image was the memory I captured in the moment. A reminder that you may plan for perfection, but photography is often lightning in a bottle.
For the edit here, over a year after I took the image comes down to controlling tones, and leveling the exposure. The original has the foreground on the edge of being blown out, the valley in shadow, and the background too dark for the mountains. This is where layers come in handy, slowly adjusting your light to get everything uniform without flattening the image. Then you need to adjust your colors, to keep it in line with your vision for the photo. Go to far and the photo comes out flat, boring, or plastic and over saturated. This photo required very little actual adjustment, but even with luminosity masking, it took quite a bit of time to draw the masks, and adjust for the falloff.
Until Next Time!
Aperture: f8
ISO: 640
SS: 1/125th
Focal: 11mm
Fujinon 8-16mm
