Photographing Shenandoah

THE PLAN…

With a couple of spare days in mid-September, I visited Shenandoah National Park, essentially the top of Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains. I’ve always loved this part of Virginia, with its rolling, rural countryside and expansive views, so I leapt at the chance to spend a couple of days there focused on creating images.  Yes, it would’ve been better to make the trip a month or so later, with the foliage sporting fall hues, but that wasn’t a possibility.

You work with what you’re given…keep that in mind because it comes up again.

I did some basic research to create a preliminary list of places to visit at different times of day, all within 20-30 minutes of where I’d be staying inside the park, to make my limited time there most efficient.  Refined that itinerary after some scouting once I was on location.

Shenandoah is a skinny park, consisting of the tip of the mountains, Skyline Drive running straight down the middle, with additional acreage spread into the valleys and hollows to both east (toward Virginia’s Piedmont region) and west (toward the Shenandoah Valley).  One road in and out, minimizing decision making, placed at the top of a mountain range with views galore…sounds perfect.

What could go wrong?

ABOUT THE WEATHER…

Good weather is a key to good landscape photography. 
And by good weather I don’t mean cloudless, blue skies; those are for ballgames, picnics, outdoor weddings and running a 10K.  Clouds add mood and interest, particularly at the ends of the day when they take on the dramatic shades of the rising or setting sun.   Or before or after a storm, when roiling clouds make for soft and dappled light upon the subject and can become a background by themselves.   When a photographer says “good light” this is usually what they mean.  Save for my first sunset in the park, I had no clouds at all, and those on the first night weren’t especially satisfying.

So…what do you do?  Well, you can either punt or make the best of it, understanding it’s possible you may not come away with any portfolio-quality images.

Which stinks, but it’s not an excuse to give up.  So I looked for good light falling on the landscape, side-lit trees and rocks, grasses, etc.

Which brings me to another Shenandoah-specific hurdle:

GO TAKE A HIKE

Shenandoah is structured around Skyline Drive, it’s the only road of consequence in the park and, if you visit, it’s where you’ll spend almost all of your driving time.

It’s a nice drive too, speeds limited to 30-35mph, the road winding up and down over hill and swale, rounding through sweeping switchbacks shaded by towering trees of dense, rocky woodland.  It’s pretty.  And there are scenic pull-offs scattered to either side of the road every few miles offering amazing views.  You’ll also run across the occasional parking lot dedicated to a particular trailhead for some of the many hiking trails that lace their way through the forest.

That’s basically the park, at least for the central portion that I stuck to: Skyline Drive, its many pulloffs, trailhead parking lots, and woods.

If you’re looking to hike, the park has some great trails, including the Appalachian Trail, but many more of varying lengths that will appeal to all walkers.  The Hawksbill trails, Lower and Upper, lead to some great views, and they’re not particularly long.  Same with the Stony Man trails.  Dark Hollow Falls trail is short but steep on the way back (unless you take the “secret” fire road providing a much easier and less crowded route to and from the falls).  There’s an easy, short trail right behind Big Meadows Lodge that runs up to a wonderful view of the Shenandoah Valley.

My emphasis on hiking here is because I came away with the distinct impression Shenandoah is a a hiker’s paradise.  Great if you’re a hiker - and I took a couple of hikes myself - but not so great if you’re there for landscape photography.

WHAT AN AMAZING VIEW…

Let’s start with those pulloffs.  They’ve got great names (Hazel Mountain, Crescent Rock, Hemlock Springs, Timber Hollow, and The Point, for example).  And they offer up wonderful views, with mountain ridges, folds and hollows, and lower knobs with their own wrinkled topography sweeping down in front of you to the valleys below.  It’s pretty hard not to be awe-struck when you climb out of your vehicle, walk to the wall, and take it all in.  And I can only imagine the glory of fall here, when the leaves turn.

But let’s visit one of the dirty little truths about amazing views and photography: a spectacular vista may not necessarily make for a great photograph.

Why is that?  If the view is stirring, wouldn’t a photograph of the same be stirring too?  Evidently most folks think so; can’t tell you how many people I saw stop at these overlooks, get out and look around, then pull out their cellphones to hold up and capture the scene.  And I’m not even counting the selfies.  I’d bet most of them got back home, called up those pictures, and thought, “Man, that’s not at all how it looked.”

A good photograph, like a painting, is more than just a view.  It’s a selective piece of that view, incorporating elements that form up to be greater than the sum of the whole.  Simplistically, an image (whether a painting, a drawing, or a photograph) is composed of fore, middle, and backgrounds that work to draw you in, whether by shapes, layers, or lines, giving your eyes and your imagination places to stop and ponder before moving on to ponder somewhere else within the frame.

A snapshot of a view from an overlook can’t do that, not unless you’re incredibly lucky.  To make something stirring anywhere requires a little more effort than that.  At Shenandoah, I really had to work hard for it, and that led to some frustration.

THE WOODLAND CONUNDRUM

Woodland images are, for me, very challenging.  Some artists do woodlands extremely well, but for me, finding structure in chaos is difficult.  Making it all the more rewarding when something actually works.

So, I mentioned that if you’re driving through Shenandoah and you’re not at an overlook or a trailhead parking lot then you’re staring at woods. Deeply forested woods.  Some of them with light filtering through from above, creating interesting interactions of light and shadow underneath.  Some on ground that falls off sharply downhill in the crook of a switchback, creating a natural amphitheater, trees marching like soldiers down the slopes, the floor of the forest carpeted with delicate ferns.

I saw so many opportunities for what I thought would be awesome woodland photographs that I got excited about it, actually looking forward to the chance to practice this difficult genre.

Which brought up its own challenges.  There’s nowhere to park!  No shoulder or median on Skyline Drive to speak of, so you literally watch those opportunities slide right past you.  Means you might have to park and walk a ways, or take a hike and hope it runs through a spot that works. But here’s another concrete tip you can guide yourself by: woodland photography in bright sunshine is mostly a loser’s game; every spot of sunshine that makes its way through the trees becomes a blown out hot spot surrounded by shadow, and you’ll have hundreds of these.  Without the soft light of an overcast day or, better yet, fog to create depth and separation among the trees, it’s an exercise in frustration.

One of the things Shenandoah is known for is fog, thick soupy layers of it that pool and swirl in the valleys and run up and over the ridges in the morning before the sun comes up, and hangs like shimmering ghosts in the trees.

But…yes, you guessed it, the weather has to be right. And during my visit it most decidedly was not right.

EXERCISING THE IMAGINATION…

So…cloudless skies, harsh sunlight, woodland hot spots, no fog, good views not conducive to image making.  That’s a whole heck of a lot of strikes.  Sounds as if I screwed up royally by not waiting until fall; at least then color would be exploding all over the hillsides and through the valleys.

Did I waste my time?  No, I don’t believe so.  As frustrating as it can be to not find worthy light or compositions, it helps to take a step back and consider how lucky we are to be standing at one of those overlooks appreciating that view.  We’re out in nature, man, so we should enjoy it for what it is, even if we don’t get an image.

And remember what I said about working with what you’re given?  Making the best of things?  Shenandoah makes you work for it, unlike some other iconic locations where it’s all laid out there for you.  Some of those overlooks have unmarked, hidden trails, some obvious, some much less so, overgrown with branches, wildflowers, and weeds, that lead to a better view, to a meadow with backlit trees in the morning, or to a rock outcropping that offers foreground interest and the possibility of a warm glow when they reflect early or late day light.  Depending on the time of year, some overlooks offer, on a cloudless night, a chance to practice capturing the Milky Way as it’s positioned just so over a mountain or meadow, or lines up in the saddle between two peaks.

So, yes, in addition to work, Shenandoah requires you to use your imagination too, and your eye for detail.  Maybe you won’t get the grand landscape shot, but lurking in the grass in front of you might be a more intimate composition that can be packaged with its surroundings to tell a more quiet story about the place, about sunlight captured by rocks or trees or leaves or wildflowers. Maybe you’ll get lucky and capture wildlife making their way through the landscape; there’s plenty of it, I walked up on deer several times.

So, yes, in addition to work, Shenandoah requires you to use your imagination too, and your eye for detail.  Maybe you won’t get the grand landscape shot, but lurking in the grass in front of you might be a more intimate composition that can be packaged with its surroundings to tell a more quiet story about the place, about sunlight captured by rocks or trees or leaves or wildflowers. Maybe you’ll get lucky and capture wildlife making their way through the landscape; there’s plenty of it, I walked up on deer several times.

I think it’s good to work through the challenges a place like Shenandoah can present.  Pushes you to think through things, work the imagination, exercise the critical eye.  And all of that will make, eventually, for better artistry.  Which, as I’ve harped upon previously in this space, is what we ought to be aiming for.