Almost Heaven, West Virginia!

Almost heaven, West Virginia!
Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah River.
Life is old there, older than the trees, younger than the mountains, blowing like a breeze.
Country roads, take me home to the place I belong.
West Virginia, mountain momma, take me home, country roads.

It’s impossible to go through the tunnel on I-77 North, where you enter the State of West Virginia without the melody of John Denver’s song running through your head. So as we entered West ‘By God’ Virginia, Dianna and I started singing the words. It had been a year since I had been back on my fall odyssey to capture images of the fall foliage. Last year I was about a week too early but this year I had high hopes the workshop I was going to would see the peak of color in the Canaan Valley.

Ernie and Angie Page, owners of  The Wonder Of It All Photography, are West Virginia natives that host the Fall Foliage Workshop in Canaan Valley in northeastern WV. I wrote about the Page’s workshop last year in a blog entitled Canaan Valley Workshop.  Suffice this post to say that my expectations were exceeded AGAIN!  The Page’s had picked the timing to coincide with the Peak of color!  The Reds, Golds, Oranges and Yellows were brilliant!  We moved about the valley following the best light and filled our memory cards with images of great Fall color.  I personally took over 2,000 shots.  I really loved the in-camera HDR (High Dynamic Range) function of the Canon 5D mark III, and used it most of the time to capture detail in the bright clouds as well as the subtle shadows.

As an extra bonus, Angie treated us at night with one sumptuous meal after another, Yum!

A few of my images are found below and in the gallery ‘West Virginia 2014’.

Please leave a comment on what you think.

Tim

 

Canaan Valley Workshop

This past month, I took a trip to a location from my “Bucket List”, the Canaan Valley in northeast Almost Heaven. I had booked a workshop with Ernie and Angie Page who know the picturesque locations in beautiful West Virginia as well as any other professionals. A word of explanation on how Canaan Valley made my bucket list; in the early eighties I worked for Union Carbide in West Virginia, I had heard of Canaan Valley as a high country ski area. Also, being married to Dianna, a West Virginia native, we have made yearly pilgrimages to Pocahontas County in Southeast West Virginia. I had read and heard a lot about Canaan Valley being a very photogenic locale, but I had never been there. So as soon I read about the Page’s workshop last December, I signed up immediately. The workshop was to visit Canaan Valley in the Fall to shoot the Fall foliage that turns early due to its higher elevation.
The workshop began on a Wednesday evening with an introductory slide show by Ernie and Angie. Our group was small, with another experienced shooter and a complete newbie besides myself. Ernie said the small group had the flexibility to quickly adapt the itinerary to changing conditions and we took advantage of it by covering a lot of ground and different locations during our stay.
The next morning we drove up to Dolly Sods to capture the morning’s sunrise over the rocks and heath fields, and while the sunrise sky was mostly cloudless, the high meadow of rocks and low foliage provided some interesting subjects. The next three days had us chasing locations to capture the Fall color that was still a couple of days away from peak color. Each day we could see the changes in the hillsides as Autumn did its thing. We shot country roads, old farmhouses and barns, a wetland area and the iconic Seneca Rocks.
The Pages were great hosts, very knowledgeable and accommodating to our every photography desire. The time at Canaan Valley was memorable and the images I brought back a welcomed addition to my portfolio.
I highly recommend the Page’s workshop for shooters of all experience levels.

River below Seneca Rocks

Almost Heaven

Old Farmstead

Cedar Waxwing

Country Roads, Take Me Home

Dolly Sods

Sunrise over West Virginia

West Virginia Fall Foliage

Filtered Sunlight

Pre-Dawn

Dolly Sods, WV