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Fall Color Workshop
Great Smoky National Park
October, 2001
Workshop Members & Guides — Left To Right
John Long, Tony Shum, Steve
Kossack, Michael Reichmann, Fred Arscott,
Jeffrey Behr, Chris Sanderson, David Graham, Martin Green, Jerry Witt
In late 2000 I spent a couple of months shooting in the mountains of Northern Georgia, Tennessee, and North Carolina. In planning my Fall 2001 workshop it therefore was a natural to choose Great Smoky National Park and the Blue Ridge Highway.
This page gives a brief overview of the October 2001 workshop and some images that I produced that weekend. If you'd like to learn more about this fascinating locale here's a good place to start.
As participants photographs become available there will be additional links placed here.
David Graham Steve Kossack Jeffrey Behr Jerry Witt Fred Arscott Martin Greene Tony Shum
Colour — What Colour?
What if one held a fall colour workshop, and there was no colour? That's what happened to my mid-October workshop in Great Smoky National Park. Smoky is one of the world's finest locations for fall foliage, with more species of trees than all of northern Europe.
Unfortunately a confluence of cold weather, rain (or lack thereof) and various other imponderable factors created one of the worst fall colour seasons in years. Nevertheless, having planned and anticipated our get-together for some six months, we met in Townsend, Tennessee on a weekend in mid-October, and spent 3 days exploring the park as well as the lower 50 miles of the nearby Blue Ridge Parkway.
Even without great colour this year this mountainous region of Tennessee and North Carolina never disappoints with its mountains, sweeping fog-filled valleys and fascinating waterfalls.
Orange Ridge — 2001
Photographed with a Rollei 6008i and 300mm f/4.0 Apo-Tele-Xenar lens on Provia 100F
Subtlety
Even without the intense colours that a good Smoky October produces there were abundant opportunities for enjoyable and instructive photography. I'm always partial to more subtle colour opportunities and this backlight tree in Cades Cove is one such example.
Cades Colour — 2001
Photographed with a Rollei 6008i and 180mm f/2.8 Tele-Xenar lens on Provia 100F
Working Together
For me, the pleasure of conducting an in-the-field landscape workshop is meeting with and working closely alongside the participants. This was a great group, and we had a lot of fun both shooting together as well as spending some social time while driving between locations, at meals, and in the evenings.
Where did Michael say the shot was?
The Blue Ridge Parkway
&
Shenandoah's Skyline Drive
In addition to shooting in Great Smoky we spent almost half our time during the workshop shooting along the lower 50 miles of the Blue Ridge Parkway. Before the workshop, Chris Sanderson, producer of The Video Journal and I spent 3 days driving the almost 600 mile length of the combined Skyline Drive and Blue Ridge. Running from the outskirts of Washington DC almost to Georgia, this continuous road is one of the most beautiful in the world. No stores, no billboards, no restaurants, no gas stations — nothing except a gentle two-lane road running through some of the most exquisite scenery in North America.
Blue Ridge Cows — 2001
Photographed with a Rollei 6008i and 300mm f/4.0 Apo-Tele-Xenar lens on Provia 100F
Though we drove through 4 States on our way south from Toronto we rarely saw decent Fall colour. It was a bad year almost everywhere along our route. Yet, a few places offered both some colour along with this sort of bucolic scenery.
The two mornings during the workshop that we shot from the Parkway didn't offer much in the way of exciting early morning light, but at this time of year there is always fog in the valleys. These two frames were taken just a few minutes apart from nearby overlooks.
Smokey Valley — 2001
Photographed with a Rollei 6008i and 300mm f/4.0 Apo-Tele-Xenar lens on Provia 100F
Layered Sky — 2001
Photographed with a Rollei 6008i and 300mm f/4.0 Apo-Tele-Xenar lens on Provia 100F
The massive cold front that covered most of North America that weekend produced some of the clearest skies I've ever seen in this area. But, when served a lemon, make lemonade.
Lonely Sky — 2001
Photographed with a Rollei 6008i and 180mm f/2.8 Tele-Xenar lens on Provia 100F
The Last Sunset
Sunday evening found us at a west-facing overlook on the Blue Ridge, not far from Waynesville. This was the end of the workshop and we all hoped for a decent sunset. The Smoky's famous hazy layered mountains were in evidence but the huge high pressure area that had dominated the continent's weather pattern for several days continued to haunt us.
Just as the sun was sinking below the distant mountains it managed to illuminate some wispy clouds overhead, providing some interest in the sky.
Blue Ridge Skyscape — 2001
Photographed with a Rollei 6008i and 40mm f/3.5 Super Angulon lens on Provia 100F
Seconds after the above frame was taken I switched from my Rollei's widest lens, the Schneider 40mm Super Angulon (24mm equivalent) to my longest, the Schneider 300mm Apo-Tele-Xenar (180mm equivalent). These two frames were right next to each other on the roll.
Blue Ridge Sunset — 2001
Photographed with a Rollei 6008i and 300mm f/4.0 Apo-Tele-Xenar lens on Provia 100F
When sunset was over we slowly packed up and somewhat reluctantly drove back to our base of the previous two days, the town of Maggie Valley. We found a great little Tex-Mex restaurant and closed out our four nights and three days together with some good food and drink.
