Posted by Steve Hamley on April 26, 2010 at 1:53 PM
Folks,
The Cumberland Plateau is an under appreciated area that's probably 3 times the size of the Smokies. Over the next few days, I'm going to post a few from recent travels there.
The jpeg "antlion" is a picture I composed of rocks laying around, and the conical depressions are ant lion lairs. If you "tickle" one of the depressions with a blade of grass, the ant lion will pop out and try to grab what's there. When I first saw them, I thought the depressions were caused by water dripping off the cliffs, but my guide showed me what they were. You can easily dig one out, they have large pincers although not very large, and they are harmless except to ants and small insects.
I got a bonus here in that the squiggly gray rock I placed picked up the blue sky really strongly and added a semi-complimentary color, as did the char in the upper right - and it wasn't planned. Your brain normally compensates for the blue cast from the sky (it was a 100% blue sky day), but film has no brain and the response was a very nice effect even though the squiggly rock is really not very blue at all, more of a very light cold gray.
I really like the mix of "doodlebug" pits and those cool rock fragments. I think rocks are an underappreciated subject for landscape photographers, and often make quite fascinating and amazing pictures. . .
Discussion
1 repliesThe Cumberland Plateau is an under appreciated area that's probably 3 times the size of the Smokies. Over the next few days, I'm going to post a few from recent travels there.
The jpeg "antlion" is a picture I composed of rocks laying around, and the conical depressions are ant lion lairs. If you "tickle" one of the depressions with a blade of grass, the ant lion will pop out and try to grab what's there. When I first saw them, I thought the depressions were caused by water dripping off the cliffs, but my guide showed me what they were. You can easily dig one out, they have large pincers although not very large, and they are harmless except to ants and small insects.
I got a bonus here in that the squiggly gray rock I placed picked up the blue sky really strongly and added a semi-complimentary color, as did the char in the upper right - and it wasn't planned. Your brain normally compensates for the blue cast from the sky (it was a 100% blue sky day), but film has no brain and the response was a very nice effect even though the squiggly rock is really not very blue at all, more of a very light cold gray.
Cheers, Steve