I was up too late last night, worked too long today, went to too late a meeting tonight, and am now too tired to write a blog post. I could sit writing half asleep, but I think I will just let my photos communicate, at the literal level, the spectacular sunset we were treated to Sunday evening as well as at the symbolic level of exactly how I feel tonight.
Having lamented missing most of the summer, I was happy when my husband asked if I wanted to go for a hike today. As I was reminded yesterday, the summer isn’t over yet. In spite of it being one of the more hot and humid days we’ve had in a while, I was anxious to get outside and spend some time in motion.
My husband and I have different ideas about hiking, however. I want to go at least 5 miles and am willing to go much further if there’s something to see. My husband, who is on his feet all day, prefers to pick very short, easy hikes. We compromised by choosing a place that had 3 overlooks and parked in the middle so we could bail if it turned out to be longer or more difficult than expected.
We headed out to Prentice Cooper Wildlife Management Area, which runs along the Tennessee River Gorge. It’s a beautiful area. Even the drive to get there is inspiring. We saw wild turkey and deer along the way.
The down side of the wildlife management area is the popularity of ATVs and hunting. Fortunately, between the heat and a predicted thunderstorm that never came, there were only a handful of ATVers and we didn’t hear any gunshots. Both make me nervous when we’re hiking with dogs.
Twiggy, visiting with us for the weekend, and Tisen were very enthusiastic when we got out of the car. We headed down what was called Snoopers Rock Trail, but it was really a road. We were passed by a jeep and later a Hyundai sedan, but we weren’t sorry we walked.
The view is fantastic from Snoopers Rock. Of the views I’ve seen of the river gorge, this was the best–the rock is perched above a bend in the river, providing scenery in both directions.
Unfortunately, when we headed off to the second overlook, it wasn’t clear if we were on the right trail or not. We hiked through the woods enjoying the shade and the tiny wildflowers along the trail, but the moisture in the air was gathering like a cloud around us as we walked and the mosquitos reminded us why we used to use insect repellant.
When we’d walked about as far as we thought it was supposed to be to the next overlook, we decided it was time to turn around. The trek back was all uphill. I was shocked by how hard I felt like I was working–it wasn’t that uphill.
It felt great to be in the woods and moving. Even sweating felt good. I feel more alive when I’m pushing my body, even if it’s only a little. The mosquitos I could have done without. But, after all, it is still summer.
Tisen and Twiggy were far less enthusiastic on the way back to the car. I guess I’m not the only one who hasn’t been working out.
It dawned on me today that it’s August. Kids are getting ready to go back to school just as I am noticing it’s summer.
This summer, I have spent sitting. I’ve done a little math. I figured I’ve spent an average of 80 hours a week sitting in front of a computer, 45 hour sleeping, 7 hours walking the dog(s), 1 hour doing yoga, 14 hours eating (mostly more sitting), 3 hours socializing (yet more sitting), 3 hours shooting, 4 hours working with birds, and the remaining 11 hours doing mundane tasks like getting ready in the morning, driving places, grocery shopping, dog washing, dog feeding, taking the dog to the vet, making coffee, and doing household chores.
That’s not exactly how I might have planned my summer.
I think back to the summers of my childhood when they seemed to stretch on forever. I remember running around in the neighborhood with my friends playing whatever game we could come up with much of the day. If I wouldn’t have been an avid reader, I probably would have spent the entire day outside. When friends weren’t available, I took my books outside and read in our treehouse or in a make-shift tent made of blankets hung over our swing set.
There were chores and, when I was old enough, a job. But my first job was mowing lawns–even that felt like a fun outdoor activity once I got started. I used to love the smell of fresh cut grass and the look of a neatly trimmed lawn. All of it spoke of summer to me.
It’s funny that we grow up thinking we will have summers forever. Summers with less responsibility, fewer deadlines, and an open schedule. Summers where the biggest worry is that we’ll be bored. Do kids still have summers like that? I miss them.
I miss the feeling of sleeping in on a weekday, rising to an empty house with a stocked fridge. Meandering through the day without a single thing planned, required, or demanded.
I suppose the whole summer wasn’t like that. There was a week of camp. Days I had to do things. But I looked forward to those days because the freedom of the unplanned days was sometimes overwhelming.
I entered this summer without acknowledging it. I didn’t just spend it sitting; like walking past a lost penny, I didn’t pick it up to spend it at all. I didn’t notice the longest day of the year. I didn’t catch any fireflies. I didn’t spend a single night gazing at the stars. I didn’t take a moment to sit in the shade on a hot sunny day, feeling the breeze and thinking life is good. It seems like a summer wasted.
Surely this is Olympus?
Today was full of nostalgia. It started off with a visit with friends. One of those friends is a young woman I’ve known for 23 years now–since she was 7. I didn’t realize I’d known her for 23 years until we sat down and figured it out over breakfast. But there I was, flipping back and forth in my mind between the 7 year-old Karen the day I met her and the 30 year old wife and mother sharing breakfast with me.
Karen and Chris
It was the first time I met her new daughter, just born in March. She’s a happy baby. Smiling and cooing and doing cute baby things. I will have photos from today eventually, but I need to get them downloaded and post-processed first and I forgot my card reader–I’ll have to find one tomorrow.
Since I don’t have new photos to post, I thought I would take a trip down memory lane from the last time I saw my friend and her husband. It’s hard to believe it’s been 3 years since I last saw them. We went hiking with them in Montana when Pat and I were out for a visit.
One of the things Pat and I did while we were in Montana was take a helicopter ride over Glacier National Park with some other dear friends who accompanied us on part of the trip. We flew over the mountains, above the clouds that surrounded the peaks. I think of these photos whenever my young friend talks about her job. She’s a paramedic and flies on life flights over the same mountains I paid to see.
I sometimes visualize her in an emergency medical chopper over these same mountains. I am part jealous and part afraid. Such beautiful sights so often, and to get paid to see it to boot! On the other hand, it seems like such a dangerous thing to do, rushing out into this unforgiving landscape in a tiny helicopter to try to save someone. I am impressed all over again every time I think about it.
Reconnecting with this friend and her extended family (4 generations were at breakfast together) reminded me how wonderful family is. I found myself missing my own family as well as this adoptive family I was able to spend the morning with immediately upon leaving.
I started winding through history, remembering cute things Karen and her twin sister and younger brother did when I spent 2 summers babysitting them. I also remembered all the hard times having this group of people in my life helped me through.
I managed to slip back into the present moment enough to enjoy one of the nicest parts about meeting the whole family: getting to watch Mom and Dad, Grandma and Grandpa, Great-grandma and Great-grand dad all making faces at the newest addition to the family. They were all adorable in their face making approaches.
Roadside view of Lake Nickajack–I needed a hedge trimmer
On Sunday, our journey through the Tennessee River Gorge ended when we got to the portion of the river where it becomes Bennett Lake. This corner of what is nearly a 180 degree bend in the river marks the first time a major road intersects Mullins Cover Rd, the road we were on, after a lot of slow miles.
We opted to stick to major roads at this point. In part because we’d had enough sitting in the car and in part because we were starting to get low on gas and we hadn’t seen a gas station for many miles. We worked our way back to I-24 and headed back towards Chattanooga. We were surprised to discover we were in the Central time zone and on the Nashville side of Nickajack Lake.
I decided we should stop and get some shots of Nickajack lake since we hadn’t managed to get any really great shots from down in the gorge. Unfortunately, I didn’t decide this until after we had passed the best exit for views of the lake. We went down several dead ends trying to find a road to the lake.
Another roadside view
We ended up driving up the ridge around the lake a ways when just by chance I saw a break in the trees. We parked down the road and I walked back to the spot. It wasn’t much of a break in the trees, but it at least provided a view of the lake.
Driving through (the highway literally goes right over the middle of the lake) Nickajack lake is one of my favorite parts of the drive to Nashville (or the West end of Cumberland State park), although almost all of the drive is full of great views.
When we got back on the freeway to make our way rapidly towards food, we soon found ourselves in a traffic jam. I started taking pictures from the car. It’s always a bad sign when I start shooting through the windshield, but it gives you an idea of the kind of scenery that unfolds as you drive through this part of Tennessee . . . uh . . . Georgia? No, this was Tennessee. Barely. We crossed the Georgia state line about a mile after this image was taken.
Scene from the actual road–a “through the windshield” image
That’s another interesting thing about driving from Chattanooga to Nashville–you have to go through Georgia to get there–at least if you take I-24. I-24 dips across the state line for about 3-4 miles as it winds it way through the mountains.
Every time we drive down I-24, I am amazed that such spectacular scenery surrounds the freeway. Having grown up in flat Columbus, Ohio where you could drive for 2 hours in either direction and barely see a bump in the landscape, the ancient mountains of the Southeast make my mouth drop open. I used to always think I preferred the Rockies. I do love the Rockies, but the gentler slopes of the Appalachians have equal, if different, charm.
The moment Georgia entered my mind
The height of the river testifies to the amount of rain we’ve had
When you see stock images from the 4th of July other than fireworks, they all have one thing in common: sunshine. It’s so engrained in my memory that the 4th of July is always bright and sunny that I am unable to conjure any memories of a rainy 4th, even though I’m sure there were some.
This year, in spite of the great fortune of having 4 days mostly off work, the weather refused to cooperate. We had nothing but rain. Instead of spending 4 days hiking as we’d planned, I ended up working part of the first two days, rearranging the office in the afternoon of the 5th, and then spending the better part of that Saturday hanging shelves in the newly arranged office.
We watched several large logs racing down the rapidly moving water
Granted, it needed to be done. I’m very happy that we managed to get the office into some sort of order–I was tired of hunting through baskets on the floor when I needed something. But, to be honest, it’s not quite what I had in mind when I thought about how I wanted to spend my 4-day weekend. But, the deep gray skies that continually spouted rain day after day did make it easier to get motivated to work on the office.
On Sunday, the rain gradually eased up to a gentle mist and then evaporated. The sun popped through the first gap in the clouds we’d seen for days sometime around noon. When I took Tisen outside, I had no sunglasses or sunscreen on because I’d pretty given up on ever seeing the sun again. When the sun suddenly appeared, I had to hold my hand over my eyes and squint, worried I’d perhaps turned into a vampire and I would soon turn to dust.
I was worried about Tisen falling into the river while I was shooting
We made a quick decision to take a drive through the Tennessee River Gorge to a place called, “The Pot House.” I kid you not. In fairness, it’s officially called Pot Point House or Pot Point Cabin, but everyone calls it “the pot house” for short–even the parks and recreation department refers to it in the vernacular in some of their web pages.
Even the storm sewer looked navigable via kayak
I have yet to find an explanation as to why the point is called “Pot Point.” Perhaps the cabin was once the location of a clay pot maker?
Whatever the case may be, the views of the river gorge from Pot House were not quite what I was hoping for. After snagging a few shots, the sun decided we’d had enough and was quickly replaced with yet another torrential downpour.
One of the 2 turtles we stopped to help cross the road
While it didn’t turn out to be quite the photographic opportunity I’d been hoping for, we did get some lovely views of the river gorge (unfortunately mainly at places where it was impossible to pull off the road). We also assisted two turtles on their journey across the road, stopping to pick them up and put them where we hope they were headed. They didn’t seem grateful, but it made us feel better.
A stream running down the hillside had turned into a waterfall
The strong blue streak going skyward on the left side is what initially caught my eye
I have been shooting with my iPhone much more often since being asked for tips on how to take better photos with the iPhone. One of the areas that I have not been particularly satisfied is low-light images. They get extremely grainy and the dynamic range is quite limited.
However, when I happened to see the sky do something cool the other day, I had a choice. I could run inside, grab my DSLR and tripod, run back out and hope I hadn’t missed it. Or, I could pull my iPhone out of my pocket and do the best I could. Call me lazy, but I went for the second option.
In the few moments between shots, the streak started to spread
I used the Camera! app rather than the default Camera app (the only difference in the name is the “!”, but there are many feature differences). If I would have had a panoramic view from where I was standing, I might have tried the standard Camera app’s panoramic capability, but what was worth shooting fit into the frame, so shooting panoramic seemed unnecessary.
I chose the Camera! app because of its ability to separate the focusing point from the exposure point. You can tap the screen to select where you want to focus and then use a second figure to select a different area that you want to expose for. It’s slightly helpful in scenes like this with strong contrasts. However, slightly is the operative word. Using the dark areas for exposure blows out the sky. Using the sky clips the foreground. By picking something halfway in between, you can sometimes get something better, but in this case, I allowed the darker areas to be underexposed–they weren’t very interesting anyway.
Within 5 minutes, the effect had pretty much disappeared–good thing I didn’t run for my DSLR
The images right out of the camera didn’t have the brilliance of the actual scene. I was able to increase the saturation slightly to get it closer to reality, but the blue of the sky started to move to cyan. One of the challenges with iPhone photography (especially in low light) is that it needs post-processing, but because of the lower resolution, jpeg format, and graininess in low-light situations, adjustments can only be minimal before noise, pixellation, and general ickiness set it. Less is more.
That said, I’m still happy I pulled out my iPhone because the interesting streaks shooting skyward disappeared pretty quickly–I would still have been unzipping my tripod bag had I tried to run for the DSLR.
When I went back in to sit down and blog, I had a little trouble finding a place on the sofa. Tisen was occupying 50% of an 6’ long couch. Pat and I compressed ourselves into the other 3 feet. This isn’t a great shot (another iPhone grab), but you can just see my shoulder next to Pat who is leaning over Tisen in order to create enough room for me to type. We just couldn’t stand to wake Tisen to get him to make room–he was snoring quiet contentedly.
Trying to fit on the sofa to blog without waking Tisen
At long last, the super moon rose last Sunday evening. I suppose it wasn’t really the super moon–after all, the moon was officially full nearly 12 hours earlier. But whether you count it as the full, super moon rise or something less than that, it was dramatic.
At first, I was afraid the moon would not be visible at all that night. The low-lying clouds around the horizon threatened to ruin the view altogether. We watched and watched and suddenly a reddish glow started to show through the clouds. The glow turned from a faint hint of red to a full moon with a silhouette cloud in the foreground in a matter of moments. I barely had time to breathe before the scene before me was changing.
The moon disappeared behind a strip of clouds
After a quick exposure adjustment, I managed to capture the red-glowing moon.
A second moon rise in the same night
It rose a second time–or at least it looked that way. It passed through a stretch of clouds, appearing to rise all over again, when it crossed over the top of the cloud bank.
As it rose above the last trace of clouds, I switched lenses. I’m not that excited by close-ups of the full moon and I was shooting with a 100-400mm plus a 1.4x extender. There’s not much you can do wide with that combination. I switched to the 24-70mm lens instead. It was a good decision. The extra bright moon over the Market Street Bridge was far more interesting than a close up of the rock. Plus I got some serious topics to study up on as a result.
A helicopter forms a bright streak in the foreground
Switching to wide angle brings the Market St Bride into view
A rising cumulous cloud forms a silhouette in front of the setting sun
After shooting the moon from the Market Street Bridge the evening before the full moon, I got to share the view from the common room in our building with a group of photographers from the local photographic society chapter. A neighbor of mine and I organized a bit of a field trip. Since the common room has a wonderful view of the river and of the anticipated location of the moonrise, it seemed like the perfect choice of destinations for photographers interested in capturing the full super moon rising over the Tennessee River.
The setting sun highlights the low-lying clouds at the horizon–they don’t bode well for the moonrise
The thing about the moon is that it’s not particularly cooperative. It really can’t help it. It just has a lot of dependencies. It’s light is determined by the sun. It’s visibility determined by the clouds. It’s appearance above the horizon dependent on the objects between the moon and the viewer. When you consider that there are nearly 239,000 miles between the earth and the moon, I suppose it’s a wonder that we are able to see it at all.
Back on the other side, the cloud stretches tall in front of the sun
But the first problem is figuring out when to expect it. There are tons of places to find out the time of the moonrise, but none of them are ever right for exactly the place where you might be standing at that given time. Not unless you happen to be in the same spot the time of moonrise was calculated from.
The second problem is figuring out when the sun will set. The opportunity to capture the moon in full glory while the surroundings are still visible becomes increasingly difficult as the moonrise falls later and later relative to sunset.
Wispy pink clouds decorate the Northern sky
On this particular night, the moon would not rise until a good half hour after sunset. We, of course, scheduled our field trip to begin much earlier. We probably should have taken the group on a tour of the riverfront while we waited for moonrise to approach. However, we got to talking and snacking and decided to find a spot to shoot the sunset instead. Finding a perch on an outdoor staircase with a view of the setting sun afforded some nice views of the clouds forming in front of the sun.
As the sun fades, the pink haze turns darker
The sunset is no more reliable than the moonrise from a photographic perspective. The clouds were interesting, but didn’t quite result in the super-dramatic sunset one might hope for as a prelude to a rising super moon. After shooting the sunset long enough to end up with many wasted images, we returned to the opposing view to watch for the moon. The setting sun cast a warm glow across the Market Street Bridge and set some of the clouds aglow as well.
While it may not have been the most dramatic of sunsets, it still seemed photo-worthy.
A saucer-like cloud captured my attention
Moon faintly glowing through Walnut St Bridge
I made it back from Monaco and Nice just in time for the super moon. The super moon refers to when the moon is closer to the earth than usual, resulting in an extra large moon. The point when the moon is full is the point when it appears the largest. I’m not sure if this is because the moon is actually the closest to the earth at that point or just the effect of it being a full moon. In any case, I have now chalked up a couple of years of experience shooting full moons. I remember the words of advice I got from a fellow photographer when I first started shooting full moons. They were, “Don’t.” He went on to explain that the full moon is too bright to make an interesting image. It simply looks like a flat, smooth circle with some gray areas in it compared to the much more pock-marked, three-dimensional moon one can get when shooting a crescent moon.
Moon over the heads of unsuspecting lovers
I experimented with this advice. I found that he was absolutely right that if you just shoot the moon, once it’s much more than half full, it becomes a very flat, uninteresting rock. However, I also found that if you shoot the moon rising at the the horizon or going through architectural features or clouds as it rises, it’s much more interesting. Since this discovery, I have attempted to pay attention to when the moon is full (or close enough to full) and where and when it will rise in the hope of getting interesting moonrise images. I’ve gotten a few I like, although there’s always room for improvement. The hardest part about shooting moonrise is how fast it goes. While the moon is usually quite late appearing in the sky compared to when the official moonrise is supposed to start, once it appears, the period of time when it’s most interesting to shoot lasts only a few minutes. The moon moves so quickly that you have to watch your shutter speeds–too slow and you start to get motion blur from the movement of the moon.
Moon over the bridge
On this night, it was a pre-cursor to the actual full moon. While the moon was fullest the next morning, it was still close enough to full to get a full moon effect both the night before and the night after the moment of total fullness. I decided to walk out to Market St Bridge in the hope of catching people walking in front of the moon on Walnut St bridge. Unfortunately, low-lying clouds along the horizon prevented the moon from being visible until it was too high for people to be in front of it. When it finally appeared, it was barely a glow through the haze with the sun still relatively high in the sky (although it was headed towards sunset). It was still beautiful, though.
Wide view of moon, bridge, water, and boats
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