Camera Club Outing

Sunday afternoon was the inaugural outing of the Alleghany Camera Club. Since Saturday saw Bethany, Sarah and I shooting what should be the last wedding of the fall season, it was a great opportunity to go out and take a few nature photographs (which is the type of photography I love to do anyway).

About a dozen people, give or take a couple, showed up and hiked the 0.6 mile trail up to the top of Roaring Run. I came away with three really good shots that I'm pleased with and a fourth that I'm still mulling over. The assignment was Capturing Light & Motion, so the challenge was to show the motion of the water without leaving out the fall colors (fading as they are).

This photo was taken about halfway up the creek at the third bridge that spans Roaring Run Creek. I took a similar picture last fall and the only fall color I had then was a vivid yellow. This year the colors aren't quite as vibrant but they are still very pretty. 

What I like most about this photograph is the stump that's laying in the creek. I'm shooting from a low angle, so the tree stump looks much more massive than it really is. The stump was full of character, so much so that I actually stopped on the way back down the creek and spent another five minutes just looking at it and wondering how I could capture it's character. It really was a pretty big stump, I'd say every bit of three to four feet across the bottom. 

I looked at that stump in the fading light of day for a long moment as I made my way back down. It made me think of an older time, almost prehistoric, when trees and animals were much greater in size than they are today. Ever seen The Land Before Time cartoon where the leaf falls down and lands on the head of the Apatosaurus and covers his entire head? Or see the fossils of the dragonflies that had a wingspan of six feet? This tree stump laying calmly in the creek reminded me of those this, as if this once mighty giant tree belonged to an older time.

I didn't realize it figured so prominently into this shot until I made it back home and put it up on the monitor for processing. I'm glad that I took it now, because I think I captured the character of that old stump as it appeared to me then. That may be one of the more successful images I've ever made.