(for a weekend)

Exploring Kentucky's Red River Gorge

For those who don't know, I've recently moved down to the Louisville, Kentucky area (I'm on the Indiana side of the river) for the purpose of real estate photography (more on that another day). This last weekend I finally took a couple of days off to go explore, camp and refresh my memory on how landscape photography works. I haven't been on a photo-trip in a long time, not since the end of Capturing Canada, which, considering all of the things that have happened this year, was a lifetime ago, and it was refreshing to spend some time reminding myself why I love what I do.

No adventure, even a mini-adventure, can begin without "the road goes ever on and on" running through my head. I try to take a photo of the road whenever possible. Roads to me are like opportunities, leading infinitely on into the distance. We can never see where the good roads end, but it's enough to know that they continue. Here's the looping road that follows the gorge. It was pretty and fun to drive, though full of blind hills and at times so narrow that two cars could barely pass. Drive attentively!

Musical interlude: some of my favourite daytime driving music is by E.S. Posthumus. Perfect mood for this road.

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Arches

The Red River Gorge, or "RRG" (as they call it on the souvenir t-shirts), near Slade, Kentucky, a couple of hours west of Louisville, is a canyon system with geological features unique to this part of the country, including, apparently, more than a hundred natural arches. Most of the arches aren't as spectacular, or (more to the point) as visible as those in Utah, and I'm definitely spoiled by my travels to the Moab desert playground, but a few of these eastern counterparts are still impressive, like the ever-so-creatively named "Natural Bridge," (not to be confused with any of the other Natural Bridges in the U.S.)

It was tough to fit it in the frame, even with a 14mm lens, because of how the trees close in to both sides and prevent long distance viewing; instead of fighting against them I incorporated the trees into the composition:

The fun thing about this arch is that the trail goes not just under and around it, but over top of it as well! The Natural Bridge trails were busy on this hot, sunny Sunday afternoon (tourists are not pictured because it's a natural bridge and people just spoil the natural vibe).

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When nature becomes art

Driving over the man-made bridge into the Natural Bridge resort area, a view looking down the river struck me as being particularly pretty (this phenomenon occurs frequently on photo trips...I'll be driving along, looking around and be taken aback suddenly by the view outside the car window - often for a split second as it zips by - and I'll have to backtrack to see if it was good as it first appeared). This scene may not be special by any conventional standards - it's just a shallow stream overhung with trees - but often something about the light and the angle (the natural composition) is just right when it catches your eye. The special vibe didn't translate so well on the camera this time (that happens a lot too), but these little "coincidences" of alignment that make themselves noticed now and then lead me to wonder about the infinite possibilities for beauty that exist, given the infinite variability of light, subject and perspective at play in a 4-D world. We may stumble across these scenes randomly, by chance as it were, when we explore the world with eyes open, but as a landscape photographer it's my job to identify these coincidences and ask myself why a scene is so particularly striking. If I can begin to unlock the "secrets" to finding the optimal angles and the best light, I can actively seek them out and anticipate those moments instead of just letting them hit me randomly. In other words, sculpting my own order and beauty from the chaos of nature.

I suppose the principle is the same with other art forms and with life itself: to reliably create beautiful and meaningful things we need to first recognize and identify, as well as we can, the beauty and meaning that we find in areas like music and writing, occupations and relationships. We spend our whole lives trying to sort these things out on one or more levels of consciousness, so it's a nice break when you happen to look out the car window and see a scene already composed for you:

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Snakebitten Sunset

I'm usually better prepared than this. Maybe hiking through the grizzly-infested trails of the Canadian Rockies made me complacent about walking through the woods of central Kentucky. What's the worst I could expect to find? Black bears are always a concern, but I was ready for them and was making noise. Panthers? Scary, but rare to encounter one.

Well, how about rattlesnakes? I've spend many hours in the Southwest walking around in places where I'd expect to see rattlesnakes, and never did, but the first time I venture up a trail in Kentucky, there's a rattlesnake right smack in the middle of the path, guarding the road to Double Arch as effectively as Gandalf from the Balrog. It rattled at me. I didn't have the Sword of Gryffindor handy so I decided not to attack or circumvent the slitherer, but turned back rather than carrying on to Double Arch. It was an overgrown area and even if I got safely past that snake, I didn't want to have to meet it or any of its friends on the way back when it was really dark. No sunset is worth that risk, and that sunset was particularly not worth it.

Okay, I wasn't completely naive - I knew there were venomous snakes in the area, and I was even thinking of it as I walked - but after years of seeing pictures of dangerous animals and insects posted on trailheads around the world it's always a shock to actually encounter one. And even if I'd mistaken the snake for a root and stepped on it in the dark, I would have been statistically unlikely to die from a bite if I were able to get myself to a hospital in a reasonable time. It would have made for a lame night though, spoiling the fun of making a campfire later that evening.

Since the light was too dim to take a good photo of the rattlesnake and I didn't want to approach it with a flashlight and prime lens to take a proper portrait, here's a graphic representation, not to scale or to color or to anything, really:

And here's the Plan B view I settled on after I was turned back on the road to Double Arch:

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All good adventures end with a waterfall

Another day, a more successful hike, this time to a place called Creation Falls, where I attempted the creation of a unique composition starring an overhanging rock as a framing element. I love that green reflection!

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More adventures to come

I don't know when or where, but I do know if I will do more exploring of this area of the country in the months to come. My time will be limited, but I'll make the best of days off here and there and maybe a long weekend or two. I've never driven around this part of the world with a camera, and I know little about it. Kentucky and the surrounding states don't have the grand, expressive landscapes that popularized the western states, but there's beauty of a subtler kind to be found, and I'm looking forward to seeking and sharing it all with you.