(or: Putting The Year In My Rearview)
When I took my first image of 2024, the shutter count on my faithful old Nikon D4 read 94,031 shutter clicks.
As of December 22 (while I'm writing this) my shutter count is 95,673.
That's only 1,642 times I clicked the shutter on my D4 to take an image in 2024. There have been years where I've taken well over 10,000 images.
Now shutter clicks (or "actuations," as the camera manufacturers haughtily call them, with noses slightly in the air) are roughly the equivalent to miles on a vehicle.
So basically, if shutter clicks are miles, then my camera didn't get around much this past year. I had to make the most of the few times I put "ol' faithful" to use.
Why so few times?
A number of things: one, a bit of "life" happened in 2024, where holding a camera was the last thing on my mind - especially during and after Hurricane Helene, which I will get to. Another would be that I had grown weary of going to the same ol' places over and over. Variety is the name of the game for me; and as I've referenced many times before in prior blogs, finding fresh places with my extremely limited budget (or finding fresh takes on familiar places) has increasingly become quite the challenge... Perhaps the third and most important reason why is because, after ten or so years, I've become increasingly discriminating. I've gotten to a point where I can quite easily identify if a scene is worth capturing. And if it doesn't pass muster, the camera stays in the bag. Maybe I've just become more economical. Maybe I'm just not as engaged as in recent years...
So, in the spirit of economy, of finding moments of engagement, and only delivering my best, here's a look back on 2024...
January
It didn't take long to get off to a rip roarin' start to 2024, as I captured a frosty sunset at Newfound Gap on January 2.
And I was just getting started.
Eight days later, light snow fell just seven miles from home, at the intersection of Soco Gap and the Blue Ridge Parkway. I stood atop the Parkway bridge over US 19 to catch the scene above, a fresh take on a familiar place.
Another item crossed off the bucket list, as I traveled occasionally dicey (and icy) roads in Southwest Virginia on January 15 to capture the popular Mabry Mill in the snow. A bit challenging (even with all wheel drive) but still a ton of fun. Probably my favorite trip of the year, and certainly one of my favorite images. The streaks you see in the pond is actually falling snow (this was a long exposure, about 1/5 sec). And oh-by-the-way, this was (by a slim margin) my best-selling image of 2024.
That moment when you wake up too late to capture any wintry locations you set out to photograph, settling for a roadside park in Newland, NC to salvage an image of what snow was left. At least I went home with something...
February
The camera never made it out of the bag. The one photography trip I made was to Cades Cove on February 26, where the hoped for daffodil blooms never materialized.
March
It was a lengthy 34 days in between images, with my last being taken on January 29. But this one, a colorful sunset taken on the Blue Ridge Parkway March 3, was a nice (if brief) return to the field...
April
It would be once again over a month before the camera would come out of the bag, with this lovely light show in late April being the best of the bunch, but things would get busy soon enough...
May
After a rather tumultuous April (best to keep that brief period "in the rearview," as the subtitle of this blog suggests) May couldn't come soon enough.
And wow, did Linville Gorge ever deliver.
I (somehow) got up at 5:30 AM from my room at the Pixie Inn on May 3 to schlep my gear (and my aging body) up the short-but-steep climb up Hawksbill Mountain to catch a sunrise. And as you can see above, it was glorious.
But that wasn't the main image I was looking for.
A couple of years before, I'd noticed the shadow of Hawksbill Mountain on the opposite gorge wall just after sunrise; so I snapped a few wide angle images, liking what I saw.
Unfortunately, dummy here didn't back up my laptop; and when it unexpectedly went belly up later in the year, so did all the images I took from that day, as well as several gems I'd captured over the summer.
Two years later, I finally had a chance to redeem myself. So once I'd captured the sunrise, I sauntered over to the exact same spot where I stood almost two years to the day. My photography partners that morning - Thomas Mabry (AKA "Badger") and Joseph Nitti - gave me a rather bemused look as I wandered over to the opposite side of the sunrise. Still a contrarian after all these years.
But I had a purpose.
Not only were the rhododendron blooms better than two years before - it was the best bloom I'd ever seen in Linville Gorge - but the shadow of Hawksbill on the gorge wall at right center served as a perfect "yang" to the blooms' "yin."
And this, my friends, was my favorite image of 2024.
But we carry on...
The hype surrounding the "Northern Lights" making their way south didn't quite convince me to get out a week after my exploits on Hawksbill. Hype often tends to lead to disappointment; but this go around, it turns out that I'd goofed. There were some frankly stellar images that came from that weekend, especially Friday.
So I wandered out in the dark (with my awful night vision) all the way to Craggy Gardens on Saturday night, only to get snookered by cloud cover. I was bumming out all the way home, but I decided to give it one more go, near home at Soco Gap, at an old abandoned restaurant:
Maybe you can make out a faint glimpse of the aurora borealis at left center; but mostly, it's just a night image, as I was standing in complete darkness. It was only the headlights of passing cars that lit up the old restaurant, giving me something to work with. This was a 20 second exposure at ISO 1600 taken on my ancient Nikon D4, with an even more ancient Nikkor 14mm f/2.8D prime lens bolted to it. That old gear still works!
June
And the uptick in images continued into June, as Craggy Gardens gave forth quite a show at sunset:
Yeah, it was that good to see in person. Another favorite from 2024...
The Parkway near home gave a multi-layered view of the Rhodies in bloom:
While Roan Mountain was more notable for the little things. The main attraction - the colorful Catawba Rhododendron - were a bit...lacking this year:
So the Flame Azalea:
And the rare Gray's Lily:
...made up for what the usual spots on Roan were lacking.
July
The original game plan for July and the remainder of summer was to embark on a summer-long search for the most picturesque minor league baseball stadiums in the south - much like my summer-long search for old "See Rock City" barns last year. The thought of traveling through the Southeast, tracking down those historic minor league cathedrals while indulging my love of travel (not to mention my love for baseball and photography through the "silly summer" months) excited me to no end. Then reality set in. The cost of visiting a minor league ball game had risen exponentially in the past few years, which did not excite me to no end. And homeboy here isn't made of gold. Maybe plywood, flimsy aluminum, particle board perhaps, but definitely not gold. But I digress...
Also, ballparks have taken a rather anti-camera stance in recent years (it's a copyright thing I'm told), as I came to find when I tried to bring my old backup Nikon D300s into Truist Field in Charlotte. They sent me and my camera back to the parking lot, as they only allow smart phones.
So, bumming out, I left the D300s in the CR-V and brought back my recently purchased iPhone 13, and I was rather shocked at how good the image quality was for such a tiny sensor, and an older one at that:
Oh, there were plenty of fans in attendance - you just can't see them. They were just like me, hiding in the shade of the concourse, under the ceiling fans as game time temperatures hovered in the low-90's. Fans, hiding under the fans...
As it turned out, this would be the one and only minor league park I would visit, as I 86'd the minor league ballparks project post haste for the foreseeable future, mainly to the astronomical costs involved. At least Truist Field turned out to be one heck of a picturesque stadium, so there's that... So it was back to capturing what I could when I could, first close to home at Barn Star Events, which has officially taken the honor of being my favorite barn:
And literally just up the road in the Hemphill Community:
August
The "silly season" continued, so it was "anything goes."
There was Alpine Helen, GA:
And Highlands, NC, one of my favorite destinations close to home:
A little history too, as I found this restored service station in Brasstown, NC along old US Highway 64:
Lastly, a veritable sea of sunflowers, located in a rather obvious area, once you notice it - along the US 441/23/64 corridor in Franklin, NC:
And once you back off from the "close up," which was a two-image photo stack to keep everything in focus, you can see what the North Carolina DOT were actually creating at the US 441/23 split from US 64:
Yes, as you can see from the wide view, the letters "NC" were spelled out in sunflowers. I stood at the lower edge of the letter "C" to catch that close up image of the sunflowers, by the way.
September
Well, September started out just fine. I for one was shocked at how far the fall colors had come in the high elevations:
This was taken September 23.
Little did I know then, but only a few days later, things - for myself and virtually all of southern Appalachia - would make an unexpected, ugly turn...
Hurricane Helene.
I'm not going to rehash my own experience here (though if you'd like to read about it, here's my Facebook post:) https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1047414050724025&set=pb.100063663186056.-2207520000 But I will say this: Because of your generosity, nearly $600 was raised from calendar sales to go directly to the wonderful folks at Samaritan's Purse, who have been so instrumental in recovery efforts here in WNC. Every penny helps, considering there are still those - many months later - still recovering in the areas hardest hit. As heartened as I was at the initial outpouring of help to those affected, there is still so much more work to be done, and there are still so many struggling. I am grateful for those who have the temperament to keep the flame of awareness lit - by documenting the damage, the recovery, and the work yet to be done. The donations to Samaritan's Purse are only the beginning... October
So it would be until October 16 that I would take out the old D4 again. It was literally a year to the day when I last caught autumn and winter mingling with each other in the Great Smoky Mountains. So there was a bit of deja vu here:
But it was deja vu of the best kind, as I was thrilled to see the Smokies still intact and beautiful...
I was equally thrilled to see Kuwohi (Clingmans Dome) Road open, as I was treated to more wintry delights, with hints of fall still remaining:
After that, it was back to work, as I had a photo assignment to photograph nearby Bryson City for a publication. Because of contractual obligations, I can only share the outtakes of my time there, but let's just say I indulged my love for trains:
And new takes on old waterfalls, as seen here. Tom's Branch Falls:
Outside my photo assignments, there was my first visit back to the Blue Ridge Parkway in a month, as God sent us all a sign that better days are ahead, as vivid light overcame an otherwise bleak scene:
November
There was an artistic take on Unicoi Lake near Helen, GA, as seen above: And the waterfalls at Tallulah Gorge, as Tempesta Falls was framed by autumn color:
December
Just to keep things interesting, that fall foliage hung around into December; first, at Cades Cove on December 3, with a slight hint of winter on the distant mountain tops:
And on the Foothills Parkway near Cosby, as there was plenty of remaining autumn and approaching winter on display:
Finally, there's Christmas. So why not return to a town I'd recently gotten to know well to capture it? Bryson City, coming through again:
And that's a wrap on a crazy, topsy-turvy year. Time to leave 2024 in the rearview, and to make every day count in 2025. Yes, it's cliché I know, but it was the first thing that came to mind as I awoke New Year's morning. Make every day count.
When you're in your fifties, those old clichés aren't clichés anymore. "Learning that we're only immortal, for a limited time." Happy New Year, y'all! Time to get busy!
Beautiful captions, thanks for posting these. Stay safe my friend.