cataloochee

I went to cataloochee valley in The Great Smoky Mountains National Park yesterday. I got there at 6:30 so I would be in time for sunrise and it wasn't open til 8-doh! But I found a secondary road with some great scenery and a bull elk to photograph so that was cool. This creek was there too and I finally figured out how to shoot this kind of shot. It was actuall pretty dark and I put the camera on a tripod , set the shutter to stay open for 30 seconds or so and set the aperture to f32 or so. You get that silky effect everyone loves. You can go inside all these old houses and barns that have been maintained by the park service, so I took a lot of interior shots.

I've been wandering around Asheville, NC in the cold and dark lately taking pictures. It's fun to take pictures at night because the perspective is so different. This guy looks like I feel sometimes-just hanging around waiting for something to happen.

check out my flickr page

http://www.flickr.com/photos/themadsigntist/

This is where I live. It's very cold up here but the view is good as you can see. No really, this is Hendersonville, NC or at least a part of it. It's a nice little town nestled in the Blue Ridge mountains and we've lived here since 1994. The more I travel, the more I realize that this place is pretty good. Like a lot of people I often wish I were living somewhere else, somewhere more exciting, more vibrant, more dynamic-you get the picture. I have actually been to many places like that but they tend to come with: more crowded, more polluted, more dangerous and my least favorite as I get older: more noisy! So I gues we'll stay put a little longer and I'll try to change my perspective from a shallow one where all I see is what's on the surface to one with more depth. That probably involves getting to know more people and getting to know more about the people I know.

train track bassett

I went out early last Sunday to get some photos and came across this guy wandering down the tracks looking sad and plaintive as only a bassett hound can. I wondered what drove this dog to a life as a hobo; was it drinking? A messy divorce? I could only speculate. I decided not to get involved, to just leave him alone with his demons, to just snap the shot and move on. The right thing to do? I don't know but don't judge me, I'm not out to save the world.