Category: Smoky Mountain National Park

Great Smoky Mountains – Fog

June 8, 2022
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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

Another Award for my book on Smoky Mountain National Park

Great Smoky Mountains book
March 13, 2011
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Great Smoky Mountains bookLast week the Association of Partners for Public Lands, which includes each National Park, National Forest Service, Fish & Game and many Historic Societies, announced the winners of the 2011 Media and Partnership Awards in Dallas. The awards highlight the new ways these organizations incorporate multi-media technology, partnerships, sustainability and education to expand the outreach to public lands visitors and enthusiasts. As stated in the release for the awards, “This year’s products and programs reflect the diversity of these special places, as well as the variety of visitors who come to know and love them. These efforts to engage the public help enable visitors to understand appreciate and care for America’s public lands.”

My book Great Smoky Mountains National Park: Thirty Years of American Landscapes won in the category of Non-Partner Published works. This covers books from every national park released over the last two years. Here is what the judges had to say about the book, “What a great value for the price, a beautifully crafted book. This is a testament of dedication by those who saw the visions and made it happen.” 

In a recent article in the Chicago Suntimes, Steve Kemp, who wrote the Foreword and chapter introductions said of my work, “Richard has sensitivity for light that’s pretty rare. He can coax a richness out of landscapes and low light conditions that you don’t see other photographers experiment with. His photographs have an emotional depth that is superior to a lot of other work. It’s the best large format photography book we’ve ever been able to offer our visitors.”  

I also want to congratulate Steve, who is the Interpretive Products and Services Director Great Smoky Mountains Association, on the other five awards he and the Great Smoky Mountains Association won for their work! What an accomplishment. 

Great Smoky Mountains National Park: Thirty Years of American Landscapes, ISBN# 9780975395424, can be purchased at your favorite book store, Great Smoky Mountains Association website or in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park stores, and of course directly at Quiet Light Publishing where all books are signed by me. 

Congratulations to all the winners at GSMA! 

You can preview the book on the Quiet Light Publishing website. www.quietlightpublishing.com

It is humbling to have been so recognized by such a large association which works for the benefit of our public lands! It is what any landscape photographer who works to bring the message about our need to protect the environment to the forefront for future generations strives for. 

Peace,
Richard

Chicago Suntimes article about me & Quiet Light Publishing

December 18, 2010
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Dave Hoekstra from the Chicago Suntimes has written a great article about me and how Quiet Light Publishing came to be. He writes about how I did my first book on the Lewis & Clark Trail and my second book on Great Smoky Mountains National Park before expanding to publishing Steve Azzato’s book Their Love of Music. Here is what Dave wrote – it appears online with this link or in tomorrow’s Sunday Chicago Suntimes – December 19, 2010. First the link to the article online http://www.suntimes.com/entertainment/2831128-421/book-mack-clark-lewis-trail.html and now his article here…

Evanston photographer feels call of nature in new book
BY Dave Hoekstra dhoekstra@suntimes.com Dec 17, 2010 09:45PM

Richard Mack’s ember photograph of the Missouri River at twilight gently moves off the page into your soul. I’ve never been absorbed by a photograph in a coffee table travel book as much as this spiritual picture in The Lewis & Clark Trail: American Landscapes. Taken from the crest of the Double Ditch Indian Site, about 30 miles north of Bismarck, N.D., it was the last shot of the Evanston resident’s first book project. “I knew at the moment it could be the cover,” he said during a conversation at a Ukraninan Village coffee shop. “It was the end of a two-and-a-half year project. I was standing on a cliff. It was where the Mandan Indians had camped. As Lewis and Clark came by it was fall [Oct. 21, 1804]. You have to frame and wait for the right light, but in the landscape world, most of it is given to you by what’s going on in front of you. That was during the days of film, so if it came out I knew it would be stunning.”

The Lewis & Clark Trail is a 2007 companion piece to Mack’s 2009 Great Smoky Mountains National Park: Thirty Years of American Landscapes. In October, USA Book News named the Smoky Mountains effort as “Best Book, Nature Photography 2010.”

The landscape books launched Mack’s Quiet Light publishing company to a space where he could do a third coffee table photography book. Released last month, Their Love of Music features 117 color photographs from Libertyille-based NBC cameraman Steve Azzato. It is the first non-Mack book for the Evanston-based imprint. (All books are $65, quietlightpublishing.com.)

“Book publishing is harder than you think,” said Mack, 55. “You have to become a publisher and everything that entails. But this is the only way you make money — even though it’s not a lot. It’s like the musicians [Dave Alvin, Aaron Neville, Dave Specter and others] in the book. They do it for the love of the music, you do it for the love of the book.”

Great Smoky Mountains National Park is Mack’s best seller and the No. 1 selling large format book at the park.Steve Kemp is Interpretive Products and Services Director with the Great Smoky Mountains Association. He contributed the foreword and chapter introductions.

“Richard has a sensitivity for light that’s pretty rare,” Kemp said from his office in Gatlinburg, Tenn. “He can coax a richness out of landscapes and low light conditions that you don’t see other photographers experiment with. His photographs have an emotional depth that is superior to a lot of other work. It’s the best large format photography book we’ve ever been able to offer our visitors.”

Mack explained, “I’ve been going to the Smokies almost every year since I was 18. It was the closest national park to Chicago. You could get there in a day. I spent two years (2006-08) going there every season just to shoot for the book.”

Between 2002-2004 he ventured out from Evanston for trips that ranged from a week to 10 days for the Lewis & Clark book. He did one three-week trip to Idaho. For the first year he drove a silver Jetta and pitched a tent in campsites in places like Montana, where motels are scarce. He also wanted to replicate the solitary nature of Meriweather Lewis and William Clark. They camped in what became downtown Kansas City, Mo. In the second year, Mack ramped up to a pickup truck with a camper on the back. The trail stretches from St. Louis, Mo., across the Columbia rivers to the Pacific Ocean.

“My goal was to be in the same place Lewis and Clark were at the same time,” he said. Mack studied the explorers’ journal and relentlessly plotted out his trip. “About half of the trip was by myself, the other half with my brother-in-law,” Mack said. “He started coming along when we had the camper. It made all the difference in the world. You weren’t setting up at 10 o’clock at night and trying to clean cameras in a dusty old tent. Plus, I was tired of sleeping on the ground. If there was a morning and I was in the rain and didn’t feel right, I’d just drive.

“And if I drove 200 miles before sunset, that was fine as long as I got to a place where there was a good shot.”Now, that’s an artist on the road.

Mack’s parents John and Betty gave him a Minolta camera when he was attending Evanston Township High School.

“I liked it but I didn’t think about doing it as a profession until I took a course at the Evanston Art Center,” he said. “[Ebony photographer] Vandel Cobb and [fashion photographer] Paul McCall were the teachers. I went from there to study at Columbia College.”

Since 1980, Mack worked on ad campaigns and architectural reports for many of the top Fortune 500 companies across the country, including photography for Hyatt resorts and argicultural equipment for Caterpilllar. But he always had wide open spaces in the back of his mind.

“I’d like to do my next book on all five of the Great Lakes,” he said. “Its 20 percent of the world’s fresh water and a hot topic, as it should be. I’d like to hook in with a group like the Sierra Club or the Great Lakes Foundation, possibly, for funding. These books cost a lot to make.“People buy our books,” he said. “Our problem is getting them into stores. Barnes and Noble won’t put Lewis and Clark anywhere except along the trail. I’ve shown them my biggest sales direct are from the Northeast and Florida for some reason.

Because I’ve been a photographer forever, the production side was pretty simple. I had a designer (Rich Nickel) that wanted to work on the book. He and I had worked together for years on various projects. He knew the design side I didn’t know. Marketing was the hardest part to learn and I’m still not sure I know it well.”

Thanks Dave for writing such a great article!

Happy Holidays!

Richard

Richard Mack in Great Smoky Mountains National Park 

An Hour on Clingmans Dome

October 8, 2009
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2 Comments

Firs & Sunset, Clingmans Dome 

This past weekend I had the pleasure of being in Great Smoky Mountains National Park to do two book signing events at Sugarlands and Cades Cove Visitor Centers. It is always fun to be down there and meet folks coming into the park and get reactions to the book first hand. I have some great notes from a few of those who have taken the book home and written me about how much they love the book. I am always humbled by their notes. This past weekend I also ended up giving some advice on where to go to shoot the sunset in the park to three gentlemen who had come for the weekend to shoot some images. I mentioned that on this night they could go up to Clingmans Dome and get two very different shots, one of the full moon rising in the east and then turn to the west and photograph the ridges of mountains in the sunset. I confessed I was going to try and head someplace else to shoot the full moon rising, since I had shot it from Clingmans Dome before – and I showed them the pages in the book. But I confessed if it didn’t work I might see them up there.

 

Well, as it turns out, the location I thought might work looked a bit to far to the southeast and ridges blocked where the moon was going to come up at 81º in the east. So I eventually headed up to Clingmans Dome and ran into these gents and we ended up shooting together, along with the dozens of others up there that cold, cold evening. I was too late for the moon rise, but got there to shoot the end of the sunset. It is always fun to see how you can have 4-5 folks within feet of each other and we all get different results and see the shots differently. It was also fun to give them some advice on the techniques I use to achieve some of the my images and how late into the darkness I end up shooting, usually being the last to leave an area in total darkness.

 

All three it turns out have studio’s down south but don’t do nature photography. I got a nice note back from one of them who it turns out is the photographer for the woman’s roller derby team in Atlanta – who knew they still had roller derby? He’s got some nice shots of them. Ironically, none of them bought the book – what’s up with that? – but we all had a great time anyway! In his note he said they all decided to come back often to shoot in the park, so maybe the next time I’m there over Halloween weekend I’ll run into them again.

 

Sunset, Clingmans Dome

 

To see more from this hour of shooting on Clingmans Dome use this link: Clingmans Dome Sunset

 

Cheers!

Richard