SEEING RED

Canon EOS Rebel XS, Promaster 19-35 lens @ 19mm, ISO 200, f/14, 1.0sec.

  On Sunday, my buddy Tim Owens, his daughter Alesha, and I took a photog drive down the Roaring Fork Motor Trail in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. What a great little drive.
  The Motor Trail starts just outside of Gatlinburg and winds 6 miles through the Smokies and then returns back to Gatlinburg. It follows the Roaring Fork and has several gorgeous cascades with green, moss covered rocks, old homesteads, and several hiking trails that spur off to other parts of the park. If we had driven along the motor trail a couple of weeks ago it would have been just bursting with fall color. Unfortunately, most of the fall color has fallen off of the trees and onto the ground. There were still some yellows, oranges, and reds though and that made for a beautiful day.
  The first part of our adventure started with a 1.7mile hike to Grotto Falls. This took up the biggest part of the morning and I will have some shots from there in future posts.
  After returning from Grotto Falls, we just stopped along the Motor Trail photographing the Roaring Fork. With the morning spent at "the Grotto", the sunlight made it difficult to catch some of the larger cascades along the creek, but we did find a few spots where the shade allowed us photo ops.
   The spot in today's post was just along the road side next to a bridge and the red leaves that were covering the ground were incredible. I took the liberty of placing some of these leaves on this log to tie the log in with the rest of the red leaves laying around this small cascade. My 4-Stop ND filter made it possible for me get some longer shutter speeds in the middle of the day, thank goodness. One of the best purchases I have ever made.
  More shots coming from our trip down the Roaring Fork and once again I will visit this area of the Smokies several more times in the future.