Tennessee Photography by Bradley Proctor

This past week I had the chance to visit the Great Smoky Mountains National Park once again during its most popular time of year.  The leaves are beginning to change especially in the higher altitudes which make for fantastic photo opportunities.  For this trip I decided to take a hike on Alum Cave Trail.  As one of the most popular trails in the park, the trail was quite busy.  The hike can be fairly strenuous in parts which makes it surprising that it is so popular.

The best time to go is early in the morning as this trail becomes crowded quickly.  Especially during this time of year in the fall you will have a difficult time finding a place to park if don’t get there early enough.  I got to the start of the trail at about 7:30am and while I was the only one around, there were several cars parked from overnight hikers.

Arch Rock

The Trail

The trail is 5 miles long and intersects with Rainbow Falls trail.  From here, one can continue on to the summit of Mount LeConte and several other routes.  A popular destination for overnight hikers is Camp Mount LeConte Shelter.  For this trip I went 3 miles up the trail.  I decided to leave reaching Mount LeConte for another trip.

Alum Cave Trail starts out at 3,830 feet and continues along next to a stream for quite a ways.  There are plenty of photo opportunities of the water here for the first mile and a half or so.  A polarizing filter and neutral density filters are necessary here to get good shots of the water.  The first major landmark along the trail is Arch Rock at 1.3 miles which is a natural tunnel like rock formation in the mountain which you walk under up a rock staircase to continue on the path.

Alum Cave Bluff is at 2.2 miles along the trail and has a fair amount of steep inclines to reach.  About a half mile before and half mile after Alum Cave Bluff the trail has several scenic overlooks that you can get some good shots of the mountains.  A split or graduated neutral density filter can come in handy here.

Panoramas

There are a lot of great places for panoramas so make sure to bring the equipment you need for this.  For shooting panoramas I use a Nodal Ninja panoramic head on my tripod.  The use of a panoramic head eliminates the effects of parallax.  Although it isn’t always necessary when shooting subjects that are a long distance off, a panoramic head can also help keep your images properly aligned for easier and better quality when they are merged together.

While everyone has their own style of photography, I found that on this particular trip I used a wide angle lens almost exclusively.  This is because of the large variety of panoramic scenes that presented themselves during the hike.

Post Processing

One particular area that can be difficult with fall colors or any bright colors for that matter is blown out channels.  This needs to be watched for in the histogram of your camera when taking the shot but also when post processing images.  If you’re not careful, a wonderfully brilliant image can fail to fit into the narrow gamut of the printer.  To avoid this, make sure that you have the color profile of the printer you intend to use and soft proof the image.

This can be done if photoshop by going to “View->Proof Setup->Custom” Select your printer from the “Device to Simulate” list and select the “Simulate Paper Color” and “Simulate Black Ink” options.  Then go to “View->Proof Colors” to turn on soft proofing.  This will show what the print will look like when it is printed on the printer.  The red channel is most likely the one to watch here and some color adjustments may be necessary.  The best way to avoid any problems is to be careful of how much you bump up the saturation of your image.