What's So Great About The Mountains of North Carolina
I posed that question in high hopes that I'd be able to use this website to show you why I believe the mountains of my home state of North Carolina are one of, if not, "the" quintessential example of a state that's been given more that it's share of natural beauty. I don't mean to dismiss the Piedmont region or our lovely coastal areas, it's just that I've been coming to these mountains since I was a child, and the scenery here speaks to my heart in a way I can't adequately articulate in words. So instead of just "wording" I'll try to share with my viewers some images that I find really appealing. Should they tug at your emotions or impart any connection to you at all, let me know by clicking my email button in the top right corner of this page. These images are all for sale, and I'd be more than happy to mat and frame a fine art image to hang in your home or office. I have for many years now sold my work at Art and Craft Fairs in Georgia and in North Carolina, and will continue to do this, but I will happily put together a piece of work for you personally that you might find here...so feel free to let me know.
Nature has laid it on so heavy up here in the high regions of my home state, locals who live here call it the "high country," where all four seasons offer different charms replete with a special beauty that I try to capture with well made and excellent tools. Since realizing the power of digital photography, I've done my best, through much trial and error, to learn how to "see" light and realize how that medium or commodity makes or breaks these things called photographs. Its challenging to use a camera to snatch a moment of time or light that in milliseconds can disappear like a puff of smoke on the wind...yet when it happens I find it so satisfying. Even knowing it's a difficult endeavor to capture a scene from our multidimensional world, then attempt to print the many tones and colors onto a flat two dimensional paper or canvas to show off that scene, person, or object....well, let's say the challenge of it is part and parcel of being a photographer, and I find it a " complete joy" when it all comes together !
I really never tire of scouting out new areas to attempt this, especially this time of year when the snows give way to springtime and the colorful mountain wild flowers pop up, white and lavender rhododendrons and a plethora of other wild plants and blooms also come to life. Color comes alive in this season with insects carrying pollen around...birds twitter happily and sail on the cool breezy wind. Before too long, the summer foliage beckons to us to hike rocky trails, many with waterfalls and hidden wading pools in the forest shadows. These cool winds that are ever present in summer keep it so nice when I'm out with my camera, making what I do a lot of fun. Without much warning fall slips up on us , coming around when the trees just outdo last years performance of dressing the hills in a virtual kaleidoscope of colors, cameras of every make, model and brand have owner's clicking shutters like castanets to take home a remembrance of our finest season. Even with that being said, many others " love winter the best" for the skiing and snowboarding, or enjoying fine restaurant dinners and hot toddies before a roaring fire, and mostly unintentional car-sliding that our winter season offers.
I have to admit to having a capitol old time in winter getting out taking snow photos, there's just something magical about watching big soft snowflakes flutter down, putting a quieting white blanket over the land, then capturing images that hold that winter snow charm. The photo above was taken in March of 2013, our last big snow for that year. It was seriously chilly that morning, Johnny Carson could have really pushed that old line used years back on his show "how cold was it," but suffice to say at 7:00 am only myself and a wandering doe had braved the elements at Moses Cone. The deer appeared happy as a clam, me and "my fingers"....not so much, but I've found my best photographs happen when most people would think "look at that idiot out there with a camera," and many times that requires getting outside of your comfort zone. So do please look around at your leisure and check out my galleries.....once I have them up, since I'm redoing this site and that may take a moment or two....or three. All pro level procrastinators...join me when I say "lets all get together," not today of course but sometime next week or maybe in July 0f 2018.
We who live here call our hills the "high country," yet I should go ahead and say that I know those who live out West in the super-tall hills will laugh at us because our mountains top-out at maybe 6500 ft so we're not the Rocky Mountain "high" that John Denver sang about, or the Alps or Dolomites where Julie Andrews twirled around in that alpine meadow singing to the goats, but our Blue Ridge mountains do hold the distinction of being the oldest mountain range in the whole wide world, so there you go, or as my dear buddy Robin Eckard says. "then there's that."
Lyndon Baines Johnson, waving his Texas stetson and wiping his size 12's on the clean upholstery ( really made of painted concrete ) of the world famous " Big Chair" in Thomasville, N.C. in 1960. I was eight years old that year and wasn't notified of this meeting ! Ten years later when I could vote, I decided I could not support a man who held his beagle up for API photos...by his ears ! Actually, LBJ's earpan's looked like he'd been hung by them for weeks at a time....big as saucers, I mean.
T-Ville's "claim to fame" the ignomius "Big Chair" on the town square. Thomasville's real claim to fame was the furniture she produced, famous all over the globe, no kidding. Sadly, 6-8 yrs ago I drove by the plants that once hummed so busily for decade after decade, now standing silent and empty like a graveyard.
