SOLITARY TRAVELER PHOTOGRAPHY

My intention for this past Saturday was to head up to Boone for the private reception for all the finalists in the Appalachian Mountain Photography Competition at the Turchin Center at Appalachian State University. I wasn't a finalist this year; but given that I'd shockingly won two awards at the AMPC in 2017 (including the People's Choice Award for my image "An Entrance To Winter") I was invited back to join in the fun and festivities. It would also be a chance to hang out a

The "Spring-in-Charleston-by-way-of-Winter-in-Saluda" trip was truly a successful, satisfying escape (see Part 1 for more) - with winter and spring images all squeezed into what amounted to a single day of productive shooting. The only thing that stunk about my brief but bountiful venture was that some goob ate the rest of the chocolate chip cookies in the lobby of the Holiday Inn Express when I went back for seconds. Seriously. The desk clerk told me some guy came in and too

So I'm sitting here at my desktop tonight (which in reality is a Toshiba laptop with a broken screen, connected to an ancient White Westinghouse monitor - and is also cranky, slow, and old, much like its owner. But hey, it's got Windows 10, so there's that); and I can barely move. If I stand up to move around, I can't even straighten my right leg. And since my cozy little apartment is a two-level, I have to gingerly step down from my breakfast nook (where the glorified laptop

For the better part of the last few months, I was in a funk and I needed to find a way to break out of it. Heck, if it took gettin' down wit' my bad self, dancing like a freak to some James Brown funk in order to break out of my funk, then funk yeah. Gotta get the funk out. Okay, I just ran slap out of horrible puns; and besides, I have two left feet anyway. I'm a lover, not a dancer. Seriously, if you saw me dance, you'd collapse in uncontrollable laughter. Right after I col

When I was a kid, I had my own little Saturday morning ritual. Starting around 1980, not long after my father passed, I'd make a bee line to the grand room in our house, sit on the couch, and turn the radio to Z-93 in Atlanta to hear Casey Kasem on American Top 40. And for four hours, I'd sit and be mesmerized by the tunes Casey played, some of which weren't even on Z-93's playlist. I'd listen as he counted them down, from 40 to number one. And I did this for years, all the w

In recent weeks, the steady flow of images from Yours Truly began slowly diminishing to a near halt. And it was no fault of my sometimes dodgy Honda Civic, a car that has developed a habit of starting when she darn well feels like it - with nearly 230,000 miles on her, I'm grateful that she even starts at this point. Somehow I made it through the entire fall foliage season without being stranded, even though the ol' Civic sometimes does nothing at all when I first turn the ke

When I last left off, your faithful reporter was firmly "in my element," living life "to the max," and "going epic." (How's that for seamlessly weaving my last three blog titles into the intro of this latest one?) It seemed like every adventure yielded a new discovery, a new inspiration, a new revelation - with a bumper crop of great images to boot. And boy, did all that "epicity" pay off - I've had numerous print sales of images taken from that period, as well as downloads f

I had great hopes for Sunday morning. The rain that had soothed me to sleep the night before (and believe me, there's nothing more soothing than falling asleep to the sound of rain here in the Smokies) was scheduled to move out at sunrise Sunday morning. So I dutifully set my alarm for 5:15 AM, with two options for an epic sunrise shot dancing in my head. As it turned out, neither option became reality, because Mr. "My-body-feels-like-it-got-hit-by-a-Greyhound-Bus" here decid

Winter is always the toughest season for photography - at least for myself, anyway. If you've kept pace with my blogs, you already know that winter and I are engaged in a sort of "peaceful co-existence" - in other words, I (mostly) don't like it, but I cope as best I can. So I count the days and salvage whatever images I can until I see the first spring blooms, so I can give the wintry season the send off I think it deserves: "Don't come back now, ya hear?" Since winter isn't

I wish I could sit here and tell you that the majority of my work is the product of well-thought-out planning, superior knowledge and cunning skill. But oh no. It's more akin to what musician Bill Bruford once said about his forays into electronic percussion: "I'm here to tell you it's one constant amateurish shambles from start to finish." To be sure, I know all "the spots," the locations near home with all the elements that make great landscape images possible. I take menta

For the better part of the latter months of 2015 and even into the new year, it seemed as though the expected cold weather in the Smokies and High Country - heck, the entire southeastern United States in general - joined the bears in hibernation. There I was on Christmas Day, sporting a t-shirt and shorts, walking along Dauphin Island, Alabama for a sunset shoot - the outside temperature a toasty 78 degrees. I was half-seriously debating whether or not to bring the sunscreen.