Finding Light, Color, and Patience in the Smokeys

The past few years I have made a trip to the Appalachians during Autumn. It is difficult to plan these trips in advance because you just never know for sure when the peak colors will arrive. Last year I planned a trip to the Linville Gorge area in North Carolina and most of the leaves had already fallen off the trees. For this year’s trip, I decided to give Cades Cove a try. I had been years ago in mid October and had good results. I considered camping at the campground right outside of Cades Cove, but they were all booked up so I opted for a hotel in Townsend, TN, the closest town to Cades Cove.

I arrived in Townsend around 3:00 in the afternoon Tuesday. There was definitely some fall color in the area (not quite peak). The weather was warm and the sky was completely clear. This may sound like perfect weather for the average tourist, but for a photographer hoping to capture some amazing landscapes, a clear sky is not good news. I wasn’t optimistic, but I headed out to the Cades Cove loop road in the hopes that maybe some clouds would form in time for sunset.

Unfortunately, Mother Nature did not oblige me. The only image I came out of the cove with that first night is this solitary tree that the setting sun was lighting up rather nicely.

Wednesday morning I got in the already long line of cars waiting for the 8 a.m. opening of the gates to Cades Cove. The skies were still clear, but luckily there was some low lying fog in the valley. I took a left turn on Sparks Lane looking for a composition. I crossed over Abrams Creek and pulled off in the little parking area on the left. I walked back toward the creek and spotted a tree in the middle of the creek bathed in sun rays and covered in glistening spider webs.

I had maybe 10 minutes of this beautiful light before the fog burned off and there was nothing but harsh light and clear skies again.

With weather conditions the same as the previous evening, I opted to avoid the crowds in the cove and explore some of the pull offs along Laurel Creek Rd. I remembered that there was a pull out right after the Bote Mountain Tunnel and figured I might experiment with capturing some light trails of the vehicles as they drove through the tunnel.

Back at the hotel Wednesday evening, I was once again faced with choosing a location to shoot on the last day of my trip. Again the weather in the cove was not supposed to be very good for photography. I remembered hearing about a few places to photograph Elk, which I have never photographed before. One of these places, Oconaluftee Visitor Center, NC, happened to be kind of on my way home. Oconaluftee was about an hour and a half from Townsend, so I was up really early so that I could make it in time for sunrise. When I arrived and walked down to the meadow, I immediately saw a bull elk grazing in the distance. It was looking like my luck was starting to change. What I didn’t know then was that I would wait and wait and wait for this bull to lift his head long enough for me to get a sharp photo. It didn’t happen.

As the elk walked far away in the opposite direction from me, I conceded defeat and left to explore the rest of the visitor center.

As I explored the Mountain Farm Museum, I noticed that a small group of elk were grazing in the field right next to the museum. I walked over, changed back over to my 100-400mm lens with 1.4x extender and again waited for the same bull I saw earlier that morning to raise his head. And again I waited and waited and waited. This was one hungry elk. He had eyes for nothing but the ground in front of him. I started to wonder if his neck gets stiff staying in the same position all the time. I knew the moment I started to pack up, he would lift his head. 5 more minutes I told myself. 5 minutes passed. I couldn’t bring myself to leave just yet. Finally, he lifted his head just a bit and I fired off several shots praying that at least one would have his eyeball in sharp focus.

Not the fog shrouded, majestic elk image I was hoping for, but for my first time photographing these beautiful animals, it is an image I can live with.

I didn’t end up getting the fantastic Autumn landscape photos I had imaged in the days leading up to my trip, but I stayed flexible and found other subjects to capture that didn’t need to include the boring, cloudless sky. I can only hope that I have more luck next year.