James, Jack and I ventured out on a three day backpacking trip in the Mount Rogers National Recreation Area last week. It was kind of the Four Seasons trip, starting out on Wednesday with temps in near 80 and ending up on Friday morning a bit below freezing. It was an awesome trip. I’ve mountain biked a lot on the northeastern side but I had never been to Mount Rogers on the southwestern exposure. I was truly amazed at the beauty, especially this time of the year before much had leafed out. It really doesn’t seem like Virginia at all. An added bonus were the ponies which seemed to be several places as we progressed through the trip.

It was Jack’s first time backpacking and he got a new pack just for the occasion. They say a large dog and carry 30% of their weight in a pack. We didn’t load him up that heavy, but it was pretty clear he had no problem with a mostly full pack. He plotted along a few feet ahead of us for most of the trip, turning around every twenty yards or so to make sure we were still coming. It’s pretty nice having a dog that you don’t have to worry about running off or getting lost. There is no way Jack would ever let us out of his sight long enough for that to happen. He is a joy, especially outdoors.

Here’s just a few pics from the trip. I don’t take any of my professional equipment on backpacking trips because of the weight, so these were shot with my little pocket Olympus that I hate so much. I guess I will get around to replacing it this summer. I kind of would like to get another Canon G series. I had a G1 about 10 years ago that I really liked. Now they are up to the G11. It’s a little big, but still portable, and much more adapted to manual shooting which is what I prefer. I think this trip convinced my I need a better knock around camera.

This is a beautiful sugar maple that is in the park behind my house. I think we are in the midst of a spectacular fall!

Mid-summer, I got a request from a wedding client to photograph the place where he had asked his fiancée to marry him. It’s a little orchard outside of Charlottesville called Carter Mountain Orchard, and apparently this is a place where they like to go every year to wander through the hillside picking apples while just getting to spend time together. It’s the perfect setting for a sunny fall afternoon and of course it is a special place to them.

As I walked through the orchard it wasn’t hard understanding why they love this little corner of their Earth. I thought about those places that become a part of us and how simple and charming some of them can be. It really doesn’t have to be some exotic location or paradise as long as we are with the people that mean the most to us. I’ve got lots of them.

Yesterday, I spent the early afternoon with the bride in her home as she prepared for their evening wedding. There over the fireplace mantle was the large canvas print he had given her as a wedding gift. She was eager to show it to me and I could tell she loves it. Of course I was much pleased and very relieved that she did! I asked her if she minded me sharing this image.

Hopefully, this portrait will serve as a daily inspiration and reminder  of a special place at a special time in their lives. I expect it will be a place that they can visit for many years to come and still get a very special feeling. Perhaps a visit there will become a family tradition, or maybe they will just keep this little place to themselves.

It’s just so nice to have those places that become a part of us.

I have been planning a little post about all of the trail work that has been going on in Mill Mountain Park over the past two+ years. There is a small group of volunteers who along with Paul Chapman, Mill Mountain Park Supervisor, meet for trail work on Friday mornings and I was able to go out with them a few times last spring before things got a little too busy. The work they have done is outstanding and things are starting to really take shape on the once abandoned southeast side of the mountain. The Wood Thrush Trail has been open for some time now and can be easily accessed from the Star trail parking area at the bottom of the mountain. The newest trail is the recently opened Virginia Pine Trail which shoots off the soutwest end of the Wood Thrush Trail and ends up down in Garden City.

I was talking with Paul this weekend and he told me about the new trail map they have just published, so if you are interested in a great trail hike right in the middle of the city, this little map can be right handy. The new map can be accessed by clicking the image link to the left.

There are so many positive things going on in Roanoke, and Mill Mountain Park is one of the best. So, enjoy!

Cheers!

Kemper

It’s nice to get away and that is exactly how I spent the last weekend at one of the PATC cabins up near Harrisonburg. My good friend and fellow photographer Brendan Bush and his wife Nicole turned us onto these awesome cabins built and maintained by the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club. We stayed in Conley which has a spectacular view and a pretty wide open layout. They are primitive cabins so no heat or running water. Conley had a wood heating stove and a wood cooking stove, and a spring was right down the hill. Best of all, the privy had a spectacular view!

You have to pack in about a half mile from your car. We were kind of fortunate that Brendan had a 4WD as the road from the bottom to the parking area was a sheet of ice and no way would anything but 4WD make it up the hill. That was even sketchy. Had we had to park at the nearest dry spot, it would have been about a 1.5 mile pack in to the cabin. But, either way, once you get there the haul is worth it.

 Sunrise from the front porch….

Jack heading up the hill at sunset…..

a swing with a view……

gettin’ our grill on at the covered grilling area….did I say primitive???…

fully stocked kitchen, all manual…..

lots of space for the pooches…..

A little hard to sleep late…

 plenty of excercise equipment…..

and best of all….the view

Poor Jack. He’s has been photographically neglected for a few months now as I have really not had a whole lot of time to play. So this morning I decided that no matter what, we were going to have a session on his regular romp in the park, and it turned out to be a beautiful morning to do it. After chasing many sticks and romping through the grass, he decided it was time to rest in a frost covered patch. I suppose he kind of enjoyed the sun on his back and the cool grass underneath. All that running had made him hot and he was satisfied to just chomp and a select stick for a few minutes. As soon as he lay down, the steam started rising from underneath him. It really was a satisfying moment for both of us. A little rest was in order.

This was a different kind of year in the garden as we moved all kinds of stuff around. Crop rotation I guess you would call it. Interestingly, tomatoes flourished and corn did not, even though both did well where they were at last year. But maybe that had more to do with the sporadic rain we had here all summer. Whatever the case, tomatoes are coming out of our ears and corn looks like it belongs in a wok.

But the big project for me this year was the crop circle! Well, with time crunch as it was in May, it was more like crop semi-circle, but I do plan on finishing it this fall. I took a stake and drove it into the ground, tied a piece of string to it, then put a spray can of white paint on the end of the string and made a template for the circle about 15 ft in diameter. Then, of course, came the real work of getting the sod up and the earth turned for some planting.

So this year I planted it with sunflowers from the seeds I had harvested last year. The seeds were from a dwarf variety that only got about 2 feet tall, but as plants will do, they reverted from their hybrid traits and I got plants from 2-5 feet tall. That was kinda cool as I think it looked more natural than when they were all the same height. There were plenty to cut and give away to friends and neighbors, which everyone always appreciates. It’s nice to bring a little of the outside inside.

I’m not sure what I’m going to do next year. Maybe a whole circle of sunflowers. Or maybe plant some perennial grasses in it like pampas and other tall varieties. I like ornamental grass and it usually looks good year round.

The sunflowers have peaked and are now starting to wane. But I really like that time of the year, and I always like the look of sunflowers that are a little spent. The texture is awesome, the way they kind of wither gracefully. But, I really like to contrast of old flowers and new ones. In a couple of months, all of them will be dried up and I get to explore the seed pods, which really is one of my favorite things to photograph.

But for now, the bees are buzzing and things still look like summer. But in a few weeks, the leaves will start to turn and things will settle down, and we’ll all be ready for some football weekends and maybe a trip or two.

So here are a few shots from the crop circle this morning. It is hard to photograph bees with a macro and no tripod, but one or two turned out like I wanted. Boy, did I ever need a little personal shoot time. All work and no play was making Kemper a dull boy.

Energized….CHECK!!!

As I predicted several blogs ago, despite the dry weather this summer this fall has been spectacular, not to mention the longest on record I would expect! I mean we have had almost a month of great fall colors and it hasn’t stopped yet. This is November for crying out loud. Thanksgiving is next week!

I really don’t spend much time in Tidewater during the fall, but I was there for Shannon and Kurt’s wedding on the 27th. As I was driving down the Colonial Parkway towards Yorktown, I spotted this splash of color on a bridge as I was crossing a tributary near the Chesapeake Bay. I stopped and captured this panorama of fall color which is not done justice on a little computer screen. Ever since I read James Michener’s Chesapeake I have this very romantic view of the bay’s natural areas. I would be willing to bet that, standing on the edge of this river bank or one like it 400 years ago, things looked just about the same.

Here’s to a very beautiful lack of progress. Save the Bay!

It is the end of summer. Ok, so I’m a few days late. Been busy!

But it really is fall, despite the 90 degree temperatures that hit us every few days. I think I’m really ready for some cool weather and fall colors. Everyone seems to think that we’re not going to have much in the way of fall colors due to the lack of rain this summer. But I seem to remember a similar summer about five years ago and the colors that fall were spectacular. I remember driving on the parkway through Floyd and Bent Mountain, and that area had some bodacious looking reds and oranges. I think I’ll trek back there for sure just to see if we have a repeat.

So, today I marked the end of summer with a few shots of the sunflowers I had out back. Of course, they have died out, but who could really blame them. After all, they spent all summer wrenching every bit of water they could out of this uber-parched dustbowl. They did a very good job, because there were lots of seeds in the flower heads. I’m actually surprised that there are still some in there. The Cardinals usually have torn them to shreds by now. There have been a few smaller birds eating on the sunflower buffet, but I haven’t seen a Cardinal there yet. Maybe they still think it’s summer.

I love the texture, color and smell of dried flowers and leaves. I can just lay down in a pile of raked leaves on a sunny fall day and nap my afternoon away. Most of the mountain bike trails will be full of leaves soon, and the smell when you ride through them makes me think of the hot summer days when they were providing much needed shade.

So here is to the end of summer, no more lightening bugs to catch…..

but plenty to see if you just look