June’s New Spot – Center Hill Lake

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June’s “New Spot was AMAZING, and one I’ll definitely be going back to. The weather cooled off significantly in early June after a pretty hot May. So I packed the car and took the kids camping out at Center Hill Lake. Though I have been on the lake before, I have never been there to shoot it. It’s really a beautiful lake, the best in the area that I’ve seen.

I started off the trip with a stop to shoot the bridge on HWY 56 that crosses the lake and a shot from the over look on HWY 56:

 

 

We then headed to the camping spot at Floating Mill Park. The campsites are all very close to the water and they face the sunset. The skies were great with fast moving clouds all weekend so I tried several long exposures:

 

 

 

And of course, the clouds made for great sunsets:

 

 

 

 

This one is my favorite of the trip, actually taken after sunset.

 

I also loved this one, my view one morning from inside my tent 🙂

 

I can’t wait to visit this lake again, in fact I may be planning something for next month…

 

If you have an idea for a place you’d like to see me shoot, let me know! Leave a comment here or send me an email!

 

May’s New Spot – Percy Warner Park

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I can’t believe I had never been to Percy Warner Park. It’s very close to Radnor Lake, so I guess that explains it. In the past, if I was in the area I would have ended up at the lake instead of Percy Warner. This park, however, has so much to offer. There are miles and miles of hiking trails and driving trails. That’s right, there are scenic driving loops that you can ride around on.

The steps that you see in the main shot are at the main entrance to the park. This is at the top looking down. Here is another view from the bottom looking up:

 

Along the driving loop, there are several nice overlooks.

 

 

 

Overall, a very nice place. I’ve visited a few times after this with my kids for short hiking trips.

 

If you have an idea for a place you’d like to see me shoot, let me know! Leave a comment here or send me an email!

 

April’s New Spot – Hurricane Creek Recreation Area

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I’ve got some catching up to do on this series!

 

April’s new spot for me was Hurricane Creek Recreation Area on Percy Priest Lake. There are many of these little “recreation” areas all around Percy Priest Lake. In January, I showed you Pooles Knob and now it’s Hurricane Creek. Pooles Knob is good for sunrises, Hurricane Creek is good for sunsets.

 

I visited several times in April, each time to capture the sunset.

 

The first shot is from a cloudless evening.

The next time I visited, I got better skies so I had to head back to that lone tree on the shore:

 

Other shots from the trips include:

 

This particular evening I was shooting with photographer and friend Chriss. It was his idea to light the tree, you can see his version on flickr.

 

This is a long exposure that was inspired by my aunt, MariAnne MacGregor, who is a photographer in the D.C. area. She was in the process of a completing a project on long exposures and they are amazing. Check those out and her new work on her facebook page.

 

We found these rocks like this

 

My kids enjoying the sunset 🙂

 

If you have an idea for a place you’d like to see me shoot, let me know! Leave a comment here or send me an email!

March’s New Spot – The Natchez Trace Bridge

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In March, I decided to visit yet another location that I’ve been meaning to get to for a while now. I headed out to the Natchez Trace bridge near Franklin, TN. The Natchez Trace is a scenic parkway that runs from middle Tennessee all the way to Natchez, Mississippi. The best part about the bridge (and something that I wasn’t expecting) is that it was wide enough for people to walk out on. There was even a parking lot at one end. This allowed us to park and walk out to catch an amazing view of the sun setting:

 

 

 

When looking up images of the bridge, I couldn’t find any shots of it at night so I decided to head out there for sunset with the idea of staying late to shoot the bridge at night.

Once the sun went down, I was able to shoot the bridge from Highway 96 below.

This is one 30 second exposure. I ended up taking about 80 of these shots, stacked them together and that’s how I got the lead photo that shows the motion of the stars. That’s how far the stars move in about 40 minutes.

 

From Wikipedia:

The Natchez Trace Parkway Bridge is a concrete double arch bridge located in Williamson County, Tennessee, 14 km (8.7 mi) from the northern terminus of the Natchez Trace Parkway. It is 479.1 m (1,572 ft) long and carries the two-lane Natchez Trace Parkway 44.2 m (145 ft) over State Route 96 and a heavily wooded valley. The 177.4 m (582 ft) long main span is symmetrical, while the 140.8 m (462 ft) long second arch is not, due to the slope of the valley at the southern end of the bridge.[2] The bridge is unique in that it does not use spandrel columns to support the deck from the arch. Rather than being evenly distributed along the arch’s length, the weight of the bridge is concentrated at the crown of the arch. The lack of spandrel columns results in a clean, unencumbered appearance.

The bridge, also known as the Natchez Trace Parkway Arches, is the first segmentally constructed concrete arch bridge in the United States.[2] The arches comprise 122 hollow box segments precast in nearby Franklin, each of which was about 3 m (9.8 ft) long and weighed between 26 and 41 metric tons (29 and 45 short tons) .[2] The deck consists of 196 precast post-tensioned trapezoidal box girder segments, each typically 2.6 m (8.5 ft) long. The sections atop the crown of the arch are 3.9 m (13 ft) deep.[2] The foundations and piers of the bridge were cast in place.[2]

 

Thanks for stopping by!

If you have an idea for a place you’d like to see me shoot, let me know! Leave a comment here or send me an email!

February’s “New Spot” – Long Hunter State Park

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First, I have to give a shout out to Crovean Web Hosting, Design and SEO. Crovean is who I use for my web hosting. For the last couple weeks I haven’t been able to write new posts because I couldn’t upload new photos. I was having a problem with my sites template. Chriss, with Crovean, spent a lot of time late at night diagnosing and fixing the problem. If you need web hosting or web design work, you should definitely visit his site.

 

Thanks to this project, I finally visited a place I’ve had in mind for a long time. On a Sunday afternoon, the family and I headed out to Long Hunter State Park. It was really a beautiful area and we plan on visiting again. We also learned a couple things while we were there, for example they don’t allow dogs on the scenic hike around Couchville Lake. We brought our little dog so we weren’t able to take that hike, but the ranger pointed us in a direction that was open to pets. I did hang out there long enough to get a photo though:

 

 

Walking down the pier, we all stopped for a new family photo 🙂

 

 

After that, we headed out to another picnic area. There was a short trail that led to the lake that started out on a bluff that overlooks Percy Priest Lake:

 

 

Along the trail:

 

 

And finally, down on the water of Percy Priest Lake:

The last spot is definitely a location I want to shoot at again. With a better sky and different time of day, it could be awesome!

 

If you have an idea for a place you’d like to see me shoot, let me know! Leave a comment here or send me an email!

 

 

January’s “New Spot” – Poole Knobs Recreation Area on Percy Priest Lake

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So this year I’ve decided that I’m going to start a monthly challenge for myself. I find that when I get out to take photos I often head to the locations that I’m familiar with. This year, I’m going to attempt to get to at least one new-to-me location every month. I’m hoping this helps me to find many more great places to shoot in middle Tennessee.

 

January’s “New Spot” was Poole Knobs Recreation Area. Less than 30 minutes from my house, I can’t believe I’ve never been there. It’s an absolutely beautiful spot and perfect for sunrise photography. There was tons of drift wood and rocks lining the shore of Percy Priest Lake, something you don’t get at the lake I usually shoot – Radnor Lake.

 

These were all shot early one Sunday morning in January. Enjoy!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you have an idea for a place you’d like to see me shoot, let me know! Leave a comment here or send me an email!

 

Most of these photos are HDR photos processed with Photomatix. If you are interested in creating HDR photos like these, you can get a 15% percent discount on Photomatix by using the Coupon Code “MALCOLMPHOTO” – Read this blog post for more information! 

 

Thanks for looking!