Autumn Sparks Lane
Open Edition
Autumn in the Great Smoky Mountains is magical. The colors and the crunch of the leaves draw people in the by the thousands. I was fourth in line to get into the Cades Cove section of Great Smoky Mountain National Park as the blue hour began to light up the night. Eventually they let us in and most people went looking for wildlife but I had a different objective in mind. There was a light fog in the valley and I pulled onto Sparks Lane and parked my car before getting to the famous scene. As I got out of the car I immediately fell into a ditch. Turns out I was mere inches from my car falling off the road! But I was ok and the car was ok so nothing to be done but proceed to hike down the road to find my composition. A lone photographer and myself had this scene to ourselves. As we talked about the cars that kept driving down the road messing up our pictures the sun was getting dangerously close to the horizon threatening to ruin my foggy, moody shot. Finally we decided to stand in the road and block the traffic for a moment or two while we both grabbed our preworked shots. Quickly we got out of the way and I hiked back to my car only to promptly fall in the grassy ditch again. Landscape photography can be dangerous, and that was before I ran into the Black Bear!