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Shooting from the Hip – Fall in the Smokies

Outbreak : Prints Available


Fall is such a beautiful time to be out in the woods. So much color and beauty as the trees put on a symphony of color that covers the forest, and the air is cool and crisp letting us know that Winter is just around the corner. For this particular image taken in the Tremont area of GSMNP, I parked my car at the bridge and dropped down to the river’s edge with my camera bag and tripod in tow, in hope of finding some scenes to capture. I had been walking for an hour when I came upon this scene and hopped up onto a large boulder so that I could get a bird’s eye view of the area. Upon dropping my bag and tripod off, I took the camera in hand and began to look through the viewfinder from every angle and spot I could find until I found the place I liked best. I have found from my experience that it is always best to do this as soon as you get to a particular place before setting up the tripod and camera. In most cases, if you set up first, then that is where you will shoot most if not all of your images from. Just as it is wise to bracket exposures, it is also wise to shoot from different heights, angles, and switching from horizontal to vertical to make sure you capture what you want. You would be amazed at how a scene changes just by the simple change of the angle or placement of the camera. So once I decided on my first setup, I looked through the viewfinder to make sure that I included all that I wanted in the image, and left out anything that in my opinion would be a distraction or take away from the scene. In a place like this, it is near impossible to exclude all of the distractions and include all that I want because there are simply just too many branches, rocks, and fallen limbs to do so. What I wanted to do here was to get your eyes to move through the scene from corner to corner, taking in all that there is here and making you feel as if you were right there. The stream is the leading line in the image as it moves from mid to upper left of the image down and out of the scene at the bottom right. And the canopy of the trees above does well to keep you in the image as it forms a boundary covering the entire top of the image and scene. So once I found the composition I think worked well, then I looked for any really distracting limbs that protruded into the image at weird angles or would cover up part of the stream. Once that was complete, I simply shot a test shot to check my exposure and make sure it was dead on. In this case, I underexposed by 2/3 of a stop to retain detail in the water and not blow it out, and simply opened up the shadows in LR upon import. I shot at an aperture of f/16 to make sure that everything was tack sharp. Canon 5DSR – Canon 11-24mm @11mm – 2 seconds @ f/16 – Really Right Stuff Tripod and Ballhead

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