On PhotoTour America we find some really amazing and interesting subjects to enhance our landscape photography. Pop art, rocks, wood, concrete, trees, and many other things have delighted the travelers and inspired them to inscribe their name, message or graffiti drawings for the next visitor who passes by. Such is the subject image for this week’s HDR photo shot this past week on PhotoTour America in Virginia.
Oh the mountains and beauty of our mountain ranges…it beacons us to come and sit for a while and enjoy the beauty of creation and bask in its glory. The colors of earth and sky, forests and sunrise-sunsets bring us to a place of rest and solitude in our hustle-bustle world. Find a place of solitude and then “sit for a spell” and take in its beauty.
“SOFT AS A CLOUD IS YON BLUE RIDGE”
SOFT as a cloud is yon blue Ridge–the Mere
Seems firm as solid crystal, breathless, clear,
And motionless; and, to the gazer’s eye,
Deeper than ocean, in the immensity
Of its vague mountains and unreal sky!
But, from the process in that still retreat,
Turn to minuter changes at our feet;
Observe how dewy Twilight has withdrawn
The crowd of daisies from the shaven lawn,
And has restored to view its tender green,
That, while the sun rode high, was lost beneath their
dazzling sheen.
–An emblem this of what the sober Hour
Can do for minds disposed to feel its power!
Thus oft, when we in vain have wished away
The petty pleasures of the garish day,
Meek eve shuts up the whole usurping host
(Unbashful dwarfs each glittering at his post)
And leaves the disencumbered spirit free
To reassume a staid simplicity.
‘Tis well–but what are helps of time and place,
When wisdom stands in need of nature’s grace;
Why do good thoughts, invoked or not, descend,
Like Angels from their bowers, our virtues to befriend;
If yet To-morrow, unbelied, may say,
“I come to open out, for fresh display,
The elastic vanities of yesterday”?
__William Wordsworth
* * *
North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains are a beautiful place filled with small mountain towns, national forests, raging rivers and the world’s most creative artists and crafters. Winding through these mountains is “America’s Favorite Drive”, the Blue Ridge Parkway. Celebrating its 75th birthday in 2009-10, the Blue Ridge Parkway has become the National Park Service’s biggest attraction. Around 20 million people visit each year to drive, ride, hike, picnic and camp – or just sit and enjoy the views.
HDR Notes: A single digital image shot from my very relaxing seated position on the hillside taking in the beauty before me; processed in Photomatix, PS-CS4 and texture overlay.
HDR Chic 