Category: Expectations

Great Smoky Mountains – Fog

June 8, 2022
CanoncloudsenvironmenteveningExpectationsGreat Smoky Mountains BookGreat Smoky Mountains NPLandscapesNational ParksRichard Mack PhotographySmoky Mountain National ParkSmoky MountainsSmoky Mountains Book

This year we need to do a third printing of my book on the park, Great Smoky Mountains National Park; Thirty Years of American Landscapes. I headed down in January for new snow images and went back last week to see about getting the synchronized fireflies and some star images. Sadly, not many synchronized fireflies had come out yet, a few but not many, and the weather was cloudy every night. What happens then? You change strategy and get images of the streams – which were running full because of the rain – and details of the mountains and the vistas with the fog lifting.

Foggy days in Great Smoky Mountains NP

Here is the first set of images of the rain and fog. I’ll do a second posting of the rivers and streams later.

It may not be what you envisioned as the images you wanted to capture but you must quickly decide that is simply fine, I can make images of other subjects. I shot video as well as we will probably have a eBook version with some of the video clips.

I have never had a bad trip to the smokies in my 40+ years of going to one of my favorite places. Always feels like a place I know even though there are parts of the park I have not been to as of yet. Hope you enjoy the images. Stay tuned for more!

Cheers, Richard

Sunrise Time-Lapse from Lighthouse Beach

November 23, 2020
Canonchanging lightcloudsExpectationsGreat Lakes ProjectLake MichiganRichard Mack PhotographySunriseThe Sweetwater Seastime-lapse

Sometimes you realize you just need to go and do something. The other morning I awoke at 5am and realized it was time to get down to the beach and try out the Timelapse+ intervalometer on a night to day time-lapse and see if it worked. I’ve had this piece of equipment for awhile and had trouble getting it to connect witht my Canon 5D Mark IV. I tested it several times and it has been working so time to get out and try a real time-lapse! Besides it is November in Chicago and almost 60 degrees at 5am – clearly one of the last mornings to try it while still not freezing cold out there!

After getting the camera and equipment together I was on the beach just before 6am, slightly later than I wanted. I started the time-lapse and stood back and just watched the waves, clouds and sun while still below the horizon light up the sky. I also used the app The Photographers Ephemeris which helps you determine the angles of the sun, moon and stars for a particular location and date. I use it to double check where the sun will pop out on the horizon.

While the time-lapse is continuing for 56 minutes I walked a bit of the beach, used another camera to shoot some of the waves and different shots I saw, but mostly watched the sunrise and the serenity of the clouds and sun as it danced higher into the sky. Not a bad morning.

Hope you enjoy this 40 second time-lapse!

Cheers, Richard Mack

Statue of Liberty

May 30, 2019
Architectural PhotographyCanondigitalExpectationsPhotography

I recently went to the Statue of Liberty while in New York. While it was a cold and blustery day with dark skies overhead it is always a compelling place to visit knowing that millions of people had their first glimpse of Lady Liberty as they came to this nation. I did not know what kind of shots I would get on a day like this but found closeups of the statue more compelling than further ones. While I did not have a lens longer than 105mm it was long enough to get in close enough. Had I carried my 28-300mm with me I would have been able to get even closer for interesting detail shots. Next time I won’t worry about the weight.

To me Lady Liberty stands for our nation, or at least for what I believe our nation is. One of welcoming all, caring about all, working with other nations to fix problems from climate change to nations with health, food, and education issues. We are a nation for good. Or at least we used to be. Currently some folks want to go back to an isolationist idea, turning our backs on the world. Maybe that is why I like the image from the back of Lady Liberty so much – it represents where I think some people in this country think we need to be. I disagree wholeheartedly. In many ways it is a sad image. From the front it sends the idea we still accept what the Statue of Liberty stands for – Liberty for All.

As for the images, much like Ansel Adams taught photographers, see your image before you click the shutter, know the exposure and what filters you need to get the tones you want in a black & white image. In my case I knew I would darken the sky and lighten Lady Liberty to bring out the contrast I imagined on such a gray day. It is easier with today’s digital imaging to know before hand what you want it to look like and then make it happen in the digital darkroom. Although maybe not as fun as watching a print come to life in the developer.

And the big plus is shooting in digital you get both a color and B&W version of the image! Sometimes it is very hard to decide which you like better! You go with a perceived idea and come back with some unexpected images you may like better.

Enjoy,

Richard

#richardmackphoto #NewYork #StatueofLiberty #Canon #Canon5DMarkIV #NPS

Lake Superior Night Sky

March 31, 2016
changing lighteveningExpectationsGreat Lakes ProjectLake Superiornature photographynight photographyNight sky time-lapseRichard Mack PhotographyThe Sweetwater SeasWinter Landscape Photography

This past March I spent a week travelling around Lake Superior. It happened to be the exact same week I had been up there in 2013, in fact this shot of the night sky was done on the same night 3 years after I had done a similar shot. This time though I was doing a series of time-lapse images of the night sky as part of my project for The Sweetwater Seas – A Documentary About North America’s Great Lakes. In 2013 there was snow and ice with temperatures below 0°F and the lake frozen over with ice. This year it was between 20-35°F and the ice was almost none existent. However, knowing the ice wouldn’t be there, I still wanted to travel around the lake and was hoping to get a few nice time-lapse of the night sky along with time-lapse of clouds and any other subject which drew me in. On a trip like this you hope to come back with at least one good set of images. I was lucky enough to exceed my expectations even though some things didn’t go the way I had hoped. I had only one clear night. I spent hours on the beach at Split Rock State Park in Minnesota shooting the night sky with wolves howling in the distance. It was a beautiful night and morning. For those who don’t know much about time-lapse, first you need to know your frame rate, how long you want the clip to be and then do the computations to figure out how many shots you need over what time period. In the case of these I did a 15 second exposure with 3 seconds in between. So to get 13 seconds of video it took almost 2 hours of shooting. Not a bad way to spend your night…