Hey Ya'll! Hope everyone is doing great this week. I had a great week last week as I was on our annual Fall Colors trip that my photography club GAPC (Goldsboro Area Photography Club) takes each year. We try to go to a different location each year but most of the trips have been to the Appalachian mountains whether in North Carolina, Virginia or West Virginia. This year it was in Georgia! This was a new location for us and we didn't know what to expect. You can make all the itineraries that you want and research but until you actually get there you don't really know.  The leaves are the main attraction of most of these trips and you really can't predict what they are going to be like when you get there. There are so many variables that control when and how much the leaves change colors. We have to plan this trip months in advance and hopefully we get the timing right for the peak foliage color the week that we are there, but its a gamble at best and all you can do it try to pick the best week for the trip with the info that you can get from the internet. We were very lucky this year , depending where we were we had good color most of the time of our trip, Some spots at higher elevations were great and lower and further south not as much. But we did get to see lots of color. Now about our trip...

Our trip was planned by our Club President Caitlin. She made the house reservations and built out the itinerary .  She did a great job. The house we stayed in or should I say cabin was in a great place. It was probably the best house we have stayed in on our fall trips. We had plenty of rooms and bathrooms even pool table.  We were located in McCaysville Georgia on the Georgia and Tennessee border. I do mean on the boarder a line goes right through the town with one side in Georgia and the other Tennessee. From this base location we could travel to all of our places we wanted to go within a two hour drive max. to our destinations .

Day 1 & 2. The first day was mainly a travel day. From eastern North Carolina to our Cabin was about 7 hours drive not counting bathroom and lunch breaks, so even longer. We had also planned a trip to the Oconaluftee visitor center in the Great Smokey Mountains National park. There are Elk that hang out around the center and we thought maybe we could get lucky and catch one. But we were too late and they had gone somewhere to bed down. The park was packed with people
going to see the fall colors and the Blue Ridge Parkway was packed also. So we headed to the house. The next day rain was scheduled for half of the day so we reworked our itinerary to hang out at the house until the rain stopped and then go to some local waterfalls we visited Fall Branch Falls and Long Creek Fall and got rained on a little bit. But got some good shots of the falls.

Day 3. Called for more waterfalls and scenic lake. We started at Hole in the Wall Restaurant in Blairsville and it was by far the best meal for me on the trip. Highly Recommend.
We drove to Lake Winfield Scott and got some really colorful shots. We
then went to Vogel state park with Trahlyta Falls and then went to Helton Creek Falls. We then went to Dahlonega Ga and had lunch at Bourbon Street Grill. We spent the rest of the day walking around the town checking out small shops and decorated streets. 

Day 4. Chattanooga Day! Chattanooga is one of those border towns with half in Tennessee and half in Georgia. The plan for the day was Rock City Gardens. This was the surprise of the trip! I had not heard of it before but it was a great destination to spend hours looking at all of
the stuff they have there. Here are some of the highlights. Needle's eye, Swing-a-long bridge, High Falls Waterfall, Lovers leap, Seven States, Rainbow hall, Fairyland Caverns, Fat Man Squeeze, Balanced Rock, Elder Frame Art installation. It's a lot to see I can tell you.  It started to cloud up so we went to lunch in Chattanooga at the Tap house bar and gill and waited the rain out. We then headed to Cloudland Canyon State park went to a waterfall Hemlock Falls was only a trickle of a fall and then the overlook trail to see the canyon. Colors were Poping! We then Returned to the Rock City Gardens for night shooting!  The park was decorated for Halloween and lots of kids were there. It was very nice.

Day 5. Zoo Atlanta. We drove to Atlanta to visit the Zoo. This was also decorated for Halloween and lots of school kids were taking field trips there this day. Had fun at the zoo although I had gone to the NC zoo just a few weeks before and liked it more but it was still nice and got some good shots of some animals there. We had lunch in Atlanta and then headed to Amicalola Falls State Park. This is the park where the Appalachian Trail begins . A 2200 mile path from Georgia to Maine. We went and checked out the falls and they were very nice. We missed the Visitor Center by 5 minutes which I would have liked to see and get souvenirs. But a great day was had.

Day 6. NE Georgia waterfalls. This day started early with a sunrise at Dodd Creek Vista. Although not the greatest of sunrise it still was nice. Next shoot was Anna Ruby Falls my favorite falls of the trip. Has about a half mile uphill hike to the falls along a creek that has lots of photo opportunity's along the way. Next was Unicoi state park and Minnehaha Falls. After lunch we went to Mercier Orchard with lots of apple products to purchase from just apples to pies, doughnuts, breads and all kind of spreads. A must stop in Blueridge Ga. 

Day 7 and 8. Friday is our last full day and we went to the Ocoee River overlooks and then to McCaysville for lunch at Burra Burra on the river. Then we walked the town and finally back to the cabin for a well deserved early day where we could relax edit photo's and I washed clothes. The last day we left the house early to get to Oconaluftee visitor center again to catch the elk. By the time we got there there was one big bull there and he crossed the river for us which was cool.  We then headed home . 

Overall it was a great workshop but we didn't have the participation that we had had in past. But those that did attend had a good time of fellowship and photo taking. I was pleasantly surprised by the Georgia trip and found the towns and people were very friendly and the towns charming. A definitely go to if you  have the chance. I love these annual fall trips and can't wait until the next one! Until next week Get out and Shoot! 

Hey if you want to check out my photography go to my instagram account Max Stansell Photography there are over 2000 posts there. Here is the link

 Max Stansell Photography Instagram Link

Hey Everybody! Hope You're having a great week! I'm getting ready for a Fall Colors Trip with my photography club and it will be mostly landscape photography. So I'm excited to go! I have been going on these workshops for over a decade and always come back with some great shots. This week I want to talk about the different types of lenses for landscape photography and the advantages and dis-advantages of the different lens focal lengths. I Really won't be talking about hardware too much but of focal length ranges and what type of shot each type of lens is good for. This blog will be talking about zoom lenses only, as I Devils Tower think that they are the only type of lens you need for Landscape work. They are versatile and convenient to use because you can't always zoom with your feet like you have to do with Prime lenses. In this discussion I won't be grouping Astro photography into the Landscape realm although many consider Astro as Landscape. I believe it is too a specialized section of photography to be jumbled in with Landscape. The Holy Trinity of lenses are commonly referred as a 16-35 wide angle zoom, 24-70mm midrange zoom and a 70-200 + telephoto zoom. All of these are full frame equivalent so if you shoot a crop sensor it's 10-18mm 18-50mm and 50-150+mm . I will go over them in the order of importance I think they should go in order of acquiring  if you don't have the lenses, I'll explain...

Telephoto range, 70-200+mm zooms. What I like about using a telephoto zoom is you can use it in almost any condition. What I mean is if you have blue sunny skies although good for a baseball game not so good for landscape photography. With the telephoto zoom you can cut out the sky altogether and isolate a certain subject . A rock , A tree Price Landing
something that a wide angle or a midrange zoom has trouble with. It has a narrow field of view which translates into not as busy of a scene. You can take the viewer right to what you want them to see. It brings distant objects closer. Say a mountain or a tree. From far away you can feature the object as the subject. Something you can't really do with a wide or midrange zoom. It can make your shots more simple and in photography a simple photograph talks volumes more than a complicated one. I would recommend this type of lens to a new landscape photographer before I would a wide angle lens because you don't have to work as hard to get stunning photographs.

Midrange, 24-70mm zoom. This lens has an expanded field of view compared to the telephoto and is great for woodland shots. Intimate forest scenes are great with this lens. It has more of a range of what the human eye can see. It is the Swiss Army knives of lenses and is very useful. I just did a Lightroom search for what focal length I use most and by far this range was the most used. A mid range zoom is on my camera most of the time and is usually where I start. Some people call this range the boring range because the super wide angle or the telephoto zooms tend to be more dramatic. It Cades Cove does have enough zoom factor to zoom in a little making a scene less complicated. It can be very wider than the telephoto so skies and distracting parts of your frame can be more amplified and harder to control. If you're a new photographer you probably got some sort of kit lens in this range. But all that said I do like this range and it fits my eye very well.

Wide angle range, 16-35mm zoom. These lenses have the widest field of view and bring the whole scene in. If you have a sweeping vista this is the lens. This lens is the hardest to compose with because it brings so much of the environment in. Usually you have to find some sort of foreground element into the shot and get very close to it . Like a rock , bush or stump. This lens tends to distort the distance of things also. Mountains in the background seem to shrink Goose Creek Grass in size and things in the foreground are larger than life. This type of lens is very condition dependent and if the skies aren't nice leave this one in the bag or get so close to the subject that you can't see the sky. These lenses can create a very busy and complex scene because it brings so much of the scene in. For me this would be the last lens I would put into your arsenal as it is the hardest to use for good compositions.

My current Landscape lenses are the 16-35mm, 20-70mm and either a 100-400 or a 70-300 which is much lighter to carry than the 100-400 if I have to hike a distance or so. Notice I didn't mention maximum aperture of the lenses. You could get the wide angle and midrange zoom of these lenses at f/2.8 maximum aperture but it would cost twice as much and be twice as heavy. For me a constant f/4 lens is plenty. I usually shoot between f/8 and f/11 and if the light is real low I will have my camera on a tripod so the f/2.8 for weight and price is a disadvantage.This is the 3 lens focal lengths that are the Holy  Trinity but some landscape photographers cut out the midrange zoom and just shoot with wide angle and telephoto zooms for all of their photography. For the upcoming trip I'm going to try to use my 16-35mm more and the 20-70 less for an experiment to see how my photographs turn out. Well that's it for this week until next week ... Get out and Shoot!

Hey if you want to check out my photography go to my instagram account Max Stansell Photography there are over 2000 posts there. Here is the link

 Max Stansell Photography Instagram Link

Hey Y'all! Hope you've had a great week. This week I want to talk about Camera Modes in particular the ones that I use. This blog is mainly for newer photographers who question if they are using the correct mode or not. First a little about me. I got my first SLR (Single Lens Reflex) camera in the mid 1970's way before the Internet , Cell phones or Instagram. Cameras were made of metal and glass and were heavy and hardly any electronics if any were in them. Maybe a light meter. You learned to shoot in manual. Of course there were no screens on the back of the camera so you had to wait a week or so to get your images back from the drug store. A very hard way to learn. Not like today where we snap a photo and have the results instantaneously
in our hands. I encourage everyone to learn how to shoot their camera in Manual mode like I did. If you know how it works in manual you will know how to correct things when you're shooting in the semi automatic modes and things don't go right. Now some people say that you are not a professional unless you shoot in manual all of  the time. I am not a believer in this. I think you should know how to shoot in manual but I don't think you're any less of a photographer if you use any of the other modes. Here are the modes I shoot in and why.

Aperture Priority Mode. I  use this mode 90% of the time. Why? Because I think that controlling the depth of field is the most important in most of my photography. That is Controlling how much of the photo is in focus. Aperture controls this. I am basically a travel/street/landscape photographer and depth of field is very important to the feel of the shot. Being able to compose and adjust Cherokee
settings quickly is a must. I'm usually walking on a photowalk and being
able to quickly adjust my aperture to get the shot is a must. So I let the camera make the decisions on shutter speed and ISO. I like to be able to isolate the subject of the photo by using the aperture to blur the background by using my aperture . I also like to make as much as I can in focus using aperture when taking a landscape shot. So that is 90% of my photography what about the other 10%?

Shutter Priority Mode. I use Shutter priority about 5% of the time. I use this when the shutter speed is the most important part of  the photograph . If I want to show motion like when something is passing through the frame I can slow it down and it will blur what is moving. Great for light trails of cars or people just walking by to show movement . This can be a great technique to adjust my shutter slow enough that
people walking blur. You usually need a tripod or some sort of support for this to work. Another time I would use it is when I shoot wildlife or sports and I want the shutter speed to be high enough to capture a moving animal or bird. Maybe 1/2000 second to freeze that deer or bear and even higher for birds of flight. Keeping the shutter speed up to eliminate movement. So I will set my shutter speed and let the camera adjust Aperture and ISO.

Manual Mode. I use manual mode 5% of the time. I basically use manual mode when I'm on a tripod. When the shooting is slow I can dial in my settings. Let's say I'm doing a landscape shot of a waterfall and I want to blur the water to make it silky smooth. Or say I'm doing a landscape shot and I want to focus stack the scene I can put my camera in manual and then just adjust my focus and the whole scene stays at the correct exposure and dosen't change. Or maybe when I'm doing long exposure astro photography where the exposure may be in minutes if Im using a star tracker. Basically for me anytime I have the camera on a tripod that means that the shooting is slow and I can be slow with my adjustments.

That is basically the 3 camera modes I use and the percentage of the time I use them. I know people will argue that manual is just as quick as one of the semi automatic modes but I know after almost 50 years of shooting that isn't true. But that's just people and we all do things different. I also use Auto ISO most of the time unless it isn't working quite the way I want. The modern camera is a wonderful tool with many technical advantages far greater than the first SLR I ever owned and the digital sensor is much more forgiving than ISO 100 film was back in the day. So don't be shy in using those Semi Automatic modes on your camera. You paid good money for that camera let it work for you some. LOL So until next week... Get out and Shoot!

Hey if you want to check out my photography go to my instagram account Max Stansell Photography there are over 2000 posts there. Here is the link

 Max Stansell Photography Instagram Link