While vacationing with my family in Blowing Rock, North Carolina I had the opportunity to take a day and explore along the Blue Ridge Parkway. The parkway is a 470 mile long scenic motor road that connects Shenandoah National Park in Virginia with Great Smoky Mountain National Park in North Carolina and Tennessee. It often follows the blue ridge crest in the Eastern US and has several overlooks, rustic lodges and hiking trails along the way. All of the following images were shot with a Canon D30

I left Blowing Rock early one morning and drove south arriving first at Price Lake a beautiful 47 acre mountain lake. The air was pretty still that morning and the reflections off the lake were quite beautiful.

This image was shot with 70-200 f/2.8 lens, ISO 100, 1/500 sec, f/4.5.

I then continued to travel south on the parkway and soon reached a place to stop and take a short hike. As I began to walk the trail I noticed many blue wildflowers and a stunning view of the mountain range to the east. Without my tripod getting the right DOF was a bit of a challenge. I tried several different approaches including limiting my DOF on purpose to focus on the wildflowers but my favorite frame was this one, shot with a 28-70 f/2.8 lens, ISO 100, 1/125 sec, f/16.

Soon I reached Crabtree Meadows and hiked down to 70-foot Crabtree Falls. Here I used my tripod and experimented with several different camera settings. The image here was shot with my 28-70 f/2.8, ISO 100, 1/4 sec, f/16.

Further south I reached another short hike and several patches of wildflowers. There were many butterflies circling and I quickly grabbed my 70-200 f/2.8 to see if I could capture a few. At first I attempted to hunt them down by slowly walking towards them but soon realized it was better to find a nice patch of flowers and wait for them to come to me. Here are two images from this patch of wildflowers.

I also found a large hilltop meadow covered with brown grass were I found this milkweed seedpod that had just broken open. Although to many, the subject mater may not seem that exciting, images such as this have sparked my interest in pursuing close-up work. The images from the D30 are very nice and when a close-up photo is enlarged the image takes on unique interest.

My background is in the graphics arts field although I have always had great interest in photography. Some support work in photojournalism led me to acquire a D30 digital SLR. I have always had a passion for photography and plan to pursue that passion for many years to come.

Extra photo from "Brookgreen Gardens"