A little color left in the Smokies, but not much

Dixie

I got this one in the early AM today. Not a lot of color left, but a little. I'm about a week or two late. Plus a storm this pass weekend took most of the leaves off all the trees in Cades Cove. In fact, hundreds of trees had to be cleared. There is a lot of damage. I don't know if it is true or not, but one of the park maintenance crew told me that there were gusts to 106 miles an hour. Hard to believe, but so is all the downed trees.

Comments and suggestions are welcome.

Click on the image for the EXIF data. I also used a ND3 to increase the exposure time.

saurora

Still a beautiful shot, even without many leaves! That's some pretty fierce winds at that speed. Sad to lose so many beautiful trees. Sometimes I don't like these types of water shots, but I really love the foreground in this one...very whispy!

Richard

That's beautiful work, Dixie. Pat yourself on the back.

Cheers,

USAIR

Awesome photo
And it's about over here too...storms beat the leaves out of the trees

Going to the Red River Gorge this weekend hope there is still some color there.

Fred

Dixie

saurora wrote:

Still a beautiful shot, even without many leaves! That's some pretty fierce winds at that speed. Sad to lose so many beautiful trees. Sometimes I don't like these types of water shots, but I really love the foreground in this one...very whispy!

Yes, it is sad about the trees. I was up here shortly after the tail end of Ivan passed through a couple of years back. I think that there was even more damage this time. It was also amazing about how fast the NPS got the the roads cleared because many of the trees closed the roads. Almost a week later they are still moving debris and downed trees out. I've never seen so much fairly heavy equipment in Cades Cove.

There was a lot of spray in the air from the river which caught the light separately from the normal flow of water. That is what caused the whispy look.

Thank you for your comments.

Dixie

rsinmadrid wrote:

That's beautiful work, Dixie. Pat yourself on the back.
Cheers,

Thank you, Richard.

Dixie

USAIR wrote:

Awesome photo
And it's about over here too...storms beat the leaves out of the trees

Going to the Red River Gorge this weekend hope there is still some color there.

Fred

Fred,

Good luck in Red River Gorge. You were right about the storm beating the leaves out of the trees. There are a couple of really colorful areas remaining where the mountains provided some shielding from the wind. Cades Cove seemed to take the worst of it because compared to areas surrounding the cove, it is pretty open and a relatively flat open area. Just a couple of miles outside the cove, but in a protected area there is still some great color. Hopefully, you will find some of those pockets of color as well.

DYancy

What the parks crew told you about the winds is quite true. My wife and I vacationed in the Smokies just two weeks ago, right after that particular storm moved through. Several roads were still blocked by downed trees at the time.

Two weeks ago there wasn't much color on the trees yet. I suspected that last weekend (Oct 28) there would have been a bunch more. Maybe I was wrong and we had already missed the brightest of it.

Nice pic, though. I really wanted to find a place to do a shot of a running stream like that but time contraints prevented it.

schmoo

Well even if the poor trees got stripped nekkid, I think that's a lovely photo and a great view of the mountains. I enjoy the fully-clad rainbow colors just as much as the last few lingering drops of yellow and red on a stark branch. Gorgeous!

Dixie

DYancy wrote:

What the parks crew told you about the winds is quite true. My wife and I vacationed in the Smokies just two weeks ago, right after that particular storm moved through. Several roads were still blocked by downed trees at the time.

Two weeks ago there wasn't much color on the trees yet. I suspected that last weekend (Oct 28) there would have been a bunch more. Maybe I was wrong and we had already missed the brightest of it.

Nice pic, though. I really wanted to find a place to do a shot of a running stream like that but time contraints prevented it.

Thank you. BTW, that one was shot along the old logging road that runs out past the Tremont Institute. The road turns to the left off the Cades Cove road about a quarter of a mile after you go through the Townsend entrance road.

Dixie

schmooo wrote:

Well even if the poor trees got stripped nekkid, I think that's a lovely photo and a great view of the mountains. I enjoy the fully-clad rainbow colors just as much as the last few lingering drops of yellow and red on a stark branch. Gorgeous!

Thank you for your comments. They are appreciated.