Reconnecting with nature through hiking, camping, and paddling
Snow fell on Richmond Thursday night. A few inches accumulated but it was nearly all gone within 24 hours. I took the day off Friday and hiked through Pocahontas State Park. This photo was taken as the sun rose over the forest. The park was beautifully covered in snow and I had the place to myself. I hiked for 5 hours and never saw another person the entire time.
The sun was just beginning to rise above the trees when I arrived at this small pond.
A friend and I hiked a 6.6 mile loop in Shenandoah National Park, specifically to get photos of waterfalls. Our hike passed three significant falls but this little cascade at the top of one of them yielded my favorite photo of the day. It isn’t very dramatic and I think that’s what I like about it. The image makes me think of a quiet, little, almost secret spot, you could visit to get away from the world for a little while.
This photo was taken about 30 minutes after sunrise on an early December day. Our neighborhood was shrouded in fog and I hoped to capture it hanging over the river. Normally fog clings heavily to the river but this day was different. I was a little disappointed but enjoyed this view from one of Richmond’s many bridges over the James River.
When I reached the upper falls on the Doyles River in Shenandoah National Park, the lighting was horrible. The foreground and most of the photo above and to the left of the falls were bathed in bright, direct sunlight. The falls and most of the photo to the right of them were in dark shadow. So I bracketed like crazy and combined two of the resulting photos to produce this HDR image of the scene.
I stitched together 6 separate photos to create this panoramic view of the rock wall at Jones Run Falls in Shenandoah National Park. The water seeping over the stone edifice makes it appear very dark, nearly black. As with all of the photos on my blog, you can click on it to see a larger, more detailed image.
This little mushroom, growing on the moss covered base of a tree, was casting quite a long shadow when I found it.
Hiking through the woods I found this single, orange leaf that had fallen into a sea of brown. It struck me as quite a standout and a good candidate for this week’s Weekly Photo Challenge topic “Solitary”.