Hawk Mountain and Hickory Flats Cemetery (9/14/16)

Back on the trail this week, I hiked along Hawk Mountain to Hickory Flats cemetery (parked at Hightower Gap) and made it almost to Three Forks (that's next on the list).

It was a very enjoyable hike and pretty mild. I hiked about 8 miles in and out with my Chamonix 4x5 and a few lenses, as well as my Bessa L. The first shot from the day was definitely my best (an unusual thing for me). This was taken with my Schneider 58mm XL and a polarizer:

This was in a beautiful backlit field of ferns along a ridge just a 1/4 mile or so past the Hawk Mountain Shelter that glowed in the afternoon sun. I need to return here and spend some more time off-trail and find some more interesting scenes.

A bit further on the trail I found a sunlit webworm nest right over the trail that I just had to try shooting. I didn't quite get the "feel" right. I'll try again next time and see if I can get more of the feeling of intense light that I saw there. These both were with a 150mm f/9 G-Claron lens:

I also tried to capture the glinting light off mica embedded in this rock on the trail:

Eventually I found myself at the Hickory Flats Cemetery - it was very quiet and peaceful there. To conclude, here's a few 35mm images from the trail and cemetery, with either my Voigtlander 15mm or Nikkor 28mm rangefinder lenses:

Dragon Con 2016 Instant Photos

I briefly went to Dragon Con this year, on Sunday of Labor Day weekend. I didn't have a lot of time to prep as I had kind of forgotten about DC this year due to moving and work that consumed most of July and August.

So I took my Linhof Master Technika equipped with a 15cm f/4.5 Voigtlander APO Lanthar and shot a bit of my stash of Fujifilm 3000B instant film. Here's the best shots:

I also took a couple of sheets of HP5+ but didn't shoot much - here's two photos from that film:

Climbing Blood Mountain (9/8/16)

Thursday, I walked the Byron Reece Memorial Trail to the Appalachian Trail, and then to the summit of Blood Mountain. It was a pretty arduous hike, mostly because I brought my big 8x10 camera and a few lenses. Luckily I have one of the lightest cameras ever made - a Wehman ultralight 8x10. The camera's bottom and clamshell have holes drilled through it to lessen the weight. I shot mostly my Nikkor 120mm f/8 lens, but also a couple with a 240mm f/9 Graphic Kowa.

Here are some of the images I shot. I used both Ilford Delta 100 film, developed in FX-39, as well as Fuji green-sensitive x-ray film developed in Rodinal:

 

And finally, here is the summit of the mountain, at the trail shelter.

Scouting the Appalachian Trail (9/6/16)

The Appalachian Trail has always interested me. I discovered that my new place is less than 20 miles away from the Southern Terminus of the AT, which is pretty cool. So I made several excursions in the past week out to some of the trail heads on the AT to scout the area.

First, I went to the Southern Terminus and hiked to the summit of Springer Mountain. I wasn't sure what I would see so I just brought my Nikon SP rangefinder and a few lenses. I used my Voigtlander 15mm f/4.5, Zeiss 21mm f/4.5 Biogon, and Voigtlander 50mm f/3.5 Heliar lenses, on T-Max 100 film developed in FX-39:

On another trip (9/4/16), I went to "Preachers Rock," which is on the Woody Gap trail head going towards Blood Mountain near Suches. I brought along my Shen-Hao PTB-617 panoramic camera and also my little Bessa L with the same 15mm lens from above:

All of the images above were taken with my Schneider 72mm f/5.6 XL lens with a 2x center filter, on Plus-X film.

Here are some 35mm snaps on the trail:

That's it for today. Going forward, I am planning to hike as much of the Georgia part of the Appalachian Trail as I can as a long-term project.