Lynn WiezyckiWhen I travel with my photographer friends we always rent a house in the area we are visiting and use that as our base. We always try to but are not always able to rent a house with a view! The house we rented in Old Fort, NC…
had a marvelous view.
The drive up to this house perched on a mountain was not easy and not for the faint of heart but it was worth it!
We were actually above the surrounding mountains so we had an amazing perspective.
I made images in the morning and around sunset! The view from the front (above) of the house and the back of the house were totally different. The light of the sunrise and sunset were the main players.
The first afternoon, we decided we would be coming back to the house every day before sunset (plus driving in the pitch black up that mountain was not my idea of fun) to capture the changes to these same views from day to day!
I am obsessed with mountains and I am always looking for that layered look of mountains. This look is enhanced by the presence of some haze.
Turning the image Black & White emphasizes the layers as the eye is not drawn to the colors, only the shapes.
I love to shoot with my ultra-wide-angle lenses but sometimes narrowing the field of view is a good thing!
As the sun goes down there are mere moments to catch that awesome light.
The front of the house was great for morning light. From this viewpoint, the sunrises were not as spectacular as the sunsets but I was still taken in by the light on the mountains and trees.
The back view was not too bad in the morning either!
Each evening as soon as we got back from our day’s adventures we would set up the tripods and pull out our cameras and wait for that day’s sunset show!
I even pulled out the infrared converted Nikon Z6 to get some different-looking images.
The IR was cool but this view was all about the color and the light!
Each evening we hoped for a different look and we got it!
One evening the clouds were heavy and fog rolled into the valleys below us! I once again zoomed in to get the mountain layers and the fog.
That same evening, the view from the front was totally different! These clouds (another of my favorite photo subjects) were so gorgeous!
The next morning, I was hoping for more fog in the valleys and sure enough, there was even more!
We got back to the house one day fairly early, so I made this late afternoon image with a bunch of fluffy clouds!
On our last morning at the house, I made my final images from the back deck and I slipped over to the vacant rental next door and shot a few from that deck.
I made an ICM (intentional camera movement) image from the front yard.
My last image was of the house itself!
We were packed up and ready to drive to Asheville and fly home!
Although we spent our days out and about the area shooting waterfalls, the Biltmore Estate, more mountains, and desserts (more in upcoming blogs)! I have so many beautiful images from this house that I will not soon forget it!
So book a house with a view. Look up, down, back, & front (Ups & Down of Photography – A Point of View) and check out the light and clouds at different times of the day on different days (Timing is Everything).
We now normally stay at a location for at least a week and use that as a base to drive out from for other nearby shoot locations, with repeats if needed. We found that by doing this, we had a better chance of coming home with images we were happy with. This time the view from the Old Fort house ended up giving me some of my favorite images of the trip!
My next blog will be on our visit to Pisgah National Forest along the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina.
To see larger versions of these and even more images, please visit my Gallery.
That is all for now!
Lynn
Mary Presson Roberts