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Articles Tagged with: leaves

Tugaloo State Park

I just wanted to share a few of my favorite shots from this past Thanksgiving holiday weekend. I spent it with family at Tugaloo State Park in Lavonia, GA, which is on Lake Hartwell (link opens up right on the cabins we stayed in).

Due to a drought, the shore of the lake was quite receded, which made for some cool photo opportunities. The photo above is taken from the receded shores of the lake and you can see where the water level used to be – all of the docks are sitting on the dried up lake bed. You’ll want to view it bigger to see the scale of the shot with my son playing with his toy sword in the bottom corner.

In the early morning fog, I was able to isolate these branches against a foggy sky in the photo above. It was so thick on the lake that visibility was a real issue. I’m not sure how it happened, but one inlet was filled with tree stumps. As the sun rose and the fog lifted, I was able to get some shots like this:

The sky was so clear at night that you could see the Milky Way above the water. I made this shot by painting the barren tree branches above with an LED flashlight:

Here’s a young boy fishing in the lake. I don’t think the fishing at the shore was very good, but I did see a guy out in a Jon Boat capture a pretty sizable looking fish.

We took a day trip out to Helen, GA and passed by the Nacoochee Indian Mound where it is said that a ceremonial Cherokee sacred fire burned unceasingly.

I have a ton of photos over on Flickr (mostly of the family variety). I just wanted to share some of my faves from the trip. Hope you had a great Thanksgiving!

Hurricane Irene In SC

I woke up yesterday much like every other day. Late in the morning I got the phone call from my wife, “They’re closing the schools down” she said. It seemed like Irene was going to hit us and destroy life as we knew it (well, that is what they told us if you had read any news websites or looked at one of the many 24 hour news channels on the old fashioned TV).

Low and behold, the rain came down pretty hard for about 5 minutes as I drove through the Charleston area. The wind was blowing enough to make some palm fronds and grass bow down (although they pretty much always do that at the coast – they’re very amiable to swift breezes).

On the porch of one apartment complex in Mount Pleasant, a toad took refuge in a corner. You know it’s bad when the frogs are out.

The destruction was imminent. Just look at what this demolition site at the old Navy Base looked like during the heart of the storm. It was quite frightening, even though it has looked like this for months now – how long does it take to tear down a building anyway?

Not knowing what to do, I hurried home (after I was done working) and evacuated my house. I left the dogs though because someone had to guard my stuff. My wife and I dropped the kids off at a friend’s house and we did what most upstanding citizens would do during a hurricane – we went out for drinks at Taps. We had to forage for food though, so I walked across the parking lot and got some Mexican food from Senor Tequila. While I was walking, I noticed that the sky was on fire, so I took out my iPhone and snapped this:

After quite a few rounds of hoppy dark goodness, my wife dragged me home. The next thing I knew, I was waking up this morning with a slight headache. I quickly ran to the medicine cabinet and downed some Aleve. The dogs wanted to go outside because they tend to do that, and to my horror I saw the destruction Irene left in my yard.

It’s gonna take me minutes to clean up these leaves. Oh, the humanity. The rain even filled my children’s wagon (well, it did earlier this week from one of those late summer storms – I just never got around to dumping it). A leaf even made it’s way in there as well – Mother nature is not one to be fucked with.

Snow In The South

I’ve only been living in the south for six years, and I’ve witnessed two snowstorms within the last year. Prior to that, it was ten years ago that snow stuck to the ground in Charleston. I’m not sure what’s going on, but I’m glad I kept one of my snow shovels from New York.

The snow froze overnight into an icy, dry, & powdery mixture which created a great texture to photograph. As I was waiting for my car to defrost, I grabbed my camera and shot these pictures with an emphasis on the texture and contrast.