Date Taken: 05/20/2016
Location: Pounding Mill Overlook, Milepost 413.2 on the southern end of the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina.

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Date Taken: 05/21/2016
Location: Pounding Mill Overlook, Milepost 413.2

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Location: Pounding Mill Overlook – Milepost 413.2
Two Different Worlds.

When I left my hotel room in Brevard, North Carolina to hopefully catch a sunrise, I looked up to the skies and saw nothing but thick clouds everywhere. Turn around and go back to bed? No way, not when you’re down in the mountains, because what you see down here in town, may not be what you see when you climb up over 5000 feet to the Blue Ridge Parkway. It’s a good half hour drive up the mountain and as I approached the parkway, I suddenly broke through the thick clouds that hung over the valley below and saw a mixture of stars and high cloud cover in the sky. I drove down the parkway a few miles and pulled into the Pounding Mill Overlook, waiting for whatever Mother Nature had in store for me. As I sipped my morning coffee, I watched as the high clouds started to glow pink, knowing that the only thing that I had to worry about was clouds rolling over the mountain and completely enveloping everything around me. A few thick clouds rolled through, but for only a few fleeting moments, leaving me with this stellar view of the predawn skies, with the low hanging cloud cover far below. Things were gloomy down in the valley for sure, but up here, high on the mountain, it was a whole different world.

Camera: Nikon D-90
Lens: NIKKOR 10–24mm f/3.5-4.5G ED
Focal Length: 10mm
ISO: 100
Shutter: 1/3
Aperture: F/11
Filters: circular polarizer
Exposure: Manual
How I Got This Shot: I set the camera up on a tripod, trying to catch the glow of the rising sun on one side of the frame and the mountains ridges on the other. I took many exposures at different shutter speeds, trying to expose on the foreground as well as the sky, but opted for a single exposure instead as the foreground turned out to be just a bunch of dead weeds.

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Location: Pounding Mill Overlook. Milepost 413.

Sunrise on a hazy summer morning from the grand vista of the Pounding Mill overlook.

Camera: Nikon

Lens: Nikkor 28-70mm f/2.8

ISO: 100

Aperture: f/22

Shutter: 1/5

Exposure: Aperture

Focal Length: 26mm

Filters: Graduated Neutral Density

How I Got This Shot

This image was captured shortly after sunrise standing at the Pounding Mill overlook. Patience was key on the hazy summer morning as the sun was behind the clouds as it came up and stayed there for quite awhile until it briefly emerged and cast warm light on the fog that ha settled into the valley below. I chose a low horizon to compose the shot to showcase the drama in the sky above and balance out the drama on the ground.

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