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Date Taken: 01/14/2017
Location: John Rock Overlook, Milepost 419.4

Camera: Nikon D7100
Lens: Nikkor 10-24mm f/3.8-4.5 ED
Focal Length: 13
ISO: 500
Shutter: 1/1000
Aperture: f/16
Filters: none
Exposure: Auto
How I Got This Shot: The John Rock Overlook can leave you disappointed if you don’t know that the view is down the trail a few hundred yards. From the parking area there’s not much to see – maybe there was a view back when the Parkway was opened but not anymore. Take the trail past the sign, then head left (the trail is obvious although not marked) and you will come to an opening in the trees and you are ‘on top of the world’ – but be careful because it’s a long way down so keep children and dogs in close proximity and under control. The view here is amazing in any season – you are looking out over the Davidson River valley and can see across to John Rock (the rock face above the Fish Hatchery parking area), Cedar Rock Mtn., and Chestnut Knob. To your left you can barely see Looking Glass (on a clear day) and to your right you can see Pilot Mtn. Sassafras Knob, and Deep Gap. Below you is the Daniel Ridge area, Cove Creek, and the headwaters of the Davidson River (the right fork). Lanning Ridge and Fork River Ridge frame the Right Fork of the Davidson River. But on this day you can’t see any of that because the valley is shrouded in cloud cover. When I awoke in Brevard at 6AM there was a dense cloud cover. But I guessed that the cloud cover was low and on the Parkway it would be clear. Well, this picture is typical of just that. Underneath the clouds, if you were camping at Cove Creek, you would awake to no sun and dense fog. But on the Parkway – it’s simply spectacular. On this day only Pilot Mtn and Sassafras Knob on the right are high enough to peak out of the clouds and into view. This picture was taken without a tripod and is composed from 5 shots taken in portrait orientation. I used Lightroom to merge the photos into a panorama. The high-res image is over 13,000 pixels wide, more than 10 times the size of this picture.

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Visit our Blue Ridge Parkway Guide for a complete list of Blue Ridge Parkway overlooks.

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Date Taken: 12/22/2016
Location: Graveyard Fields Overlook, Milepost 419 on the Blue Ridge Parkway near Asheville, North Carolina.

Camera: Nikon D7100
Lens: Nikkor 10-24mm f/3.8-4.5 ED
Focal Length: 10mm
ISO: 3200
Shutter: 25
Aperture: f/3.8
Filters: none
Exposure: Manual
How I Got This Shot: The Ursids came at a perfect time this year – clear, not to cold, and a less than half moon in the southern sky. As the Ursids radiant point is the North Star (Ursa Minor) I thought I could point the camera northward and not have too much interference from the moonlight. I chose Graveyard Fields because it offers a great N-NW view and the ridge-lines (Graveyard and Ivestor) offer a good foreground. I got really lucky and caught this fireball just after 4AM shooting towards Black Balsam.

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There are over two hundred overlooks along the 469-mile Blue Ridge Parkway. Visit our Blue Ridge Parkway guide for a complete list of the Parkway’s overlooks.

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Date Taken: 08/24/2016
Location: Devil’s Courthouse Overlook, Milepost 422.4 on the southern end of the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina.

Camera: Nikon D7100
Lens: Rokinon 14mm f/2.8
Focal Length: 14mm
ISO: 1600
Shutter: 30sec
Aperture: f/2.8
Filters: none
Exposure: Manual
How I Got This Shot: I used Stellarium to check the positioning of the Saturn and Mars conjunction in advance, then used PhotoPills to verify that I could get a panorama capturing the conjunction, the Milky Way, and the silhouette of Devil’s Courthouse. I went up to the Parkway on Tuesday night but there was a thick cloud cover and no stars. I went up again on Wednesday and the sky was perfectly clear from sunset until almost 10:15. I took these shots at 9:50PM. Some clouds rolled in shortly after that and by 10:15 the sky wasn’t visible at all. The photo was taken in the parking area and the interpretive sign is barely visible in the lower right of the picture. The panorama is composed of 5 images shot in portrait orientation in order to capture as much of the sky as possible while also getting the near ground landscape features. I used auto white balance and then adjusted to 3750K in post-processing. I actually prefer to use 3750K when shooting night shots (you get a natural look at the colors in the camera) but I forgot to change the setting before I started taking pictures. It really doesn’t matter when shooting RAW since this is easy to correct in Lightroom. There is minimal post-processing. I added clarity, just a bit of tint and contrast, and did noise reduction.

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The Blue Ridge Parkway has over 200 overlooks from its northern beginning in Shenandoah National Park to its southern terminus in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

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