Fun with Exposure Settings Take 2

Hello all! Here are 2 more from my recent visit to the smokies. Once again changing up the exposure settings to play with the water effects. This one is a bit more traditional but still interesting :)

Fun with Exposure Settings

I had the chance to go up to the Great Smokey National Park in early October for my fall break with my parents and my fiancee. We had a wonderful time being leaf watchers and I am sure some of those picts will make their way here (I am just not getting around to editing them!). These two shots are essentially identical, take of the same subject just a few seconds apart. This is the Cades Cove primitive Baptist Church, organized June 16, 1827. As we were getting ready to leave I noticed that if you stood in just the right part of the parking lot and hoped that no one ran over you, the sun was right at the top of the bell tower/steeple. I snapped a couple shots playing with exposures and f-stops to come up with these two. I like the contrast between them--I hope you do too!

More Smokies Goodness

Pretty Butterfly near the Odgen house in Cades Cove.
The old Odgen home. I love the dove tail joints here. They have stood for over 100 years and likely will a hundred more!
I love the mix of all of the stages of fall here...green, yellow, and red!!!
Fungi....everywhere!
Just a really darned cool leaf
Here are some more goodies from the Smokies a couple of weeks ago :)

Fall Is Here

Well, it is here if here is the Great Smokey National Park. It was 85 in Atlanta today...not really Fall if you ask me!!! My parents are in town though so I took them on up to the Smokies to go leaf watching. At it was incredible!!! Fall has arrive up in the mountains (as well as WAY too many people in Gatlinburg. Wow, that town in scary!) and we traveled for four days (Courtney joined us for 2 of those days) and we saw many a leaf changing color and took even more pictures. All four of us had cameras and I think that at times we may have all even taken the same picture :) These three picture are to start you out in the Fall Feast and were all taken the last day. I was really happy to actually see the 'smokey' aspect to the Smokies in the middle picture. So often the smog limits visibility but real really lucked out. You could see out in the direction of Pigeon Forge that the smog was definitely there but it in most of the other directions the view was incredible. It was much clearer this year than last year when Courtney and I visited over Labor Day. More people too!

Beautiful Baptism

Over the 4th of July weekend Courtney and I had the chance to head on up to Greenville, TN to visit with her cousin and be there for the baptism of their son, Wallace Wyatt. The visit was a lot of fun and Wallace is a cutie./ His dad, Brian, is actually the minister for Timber Ridge Presbyterian so he got to baptize his own son--cool! I caught this image after the service amidst a flurry of other photo taking. I took many of the traditional photos and you see them on my Flickr account here. The image I posted here though particularly stuck me and I think is one of the better baptism shots I have taken. I really like the combination of the baby with the cross on his father's vestments. It just says baptism and faith, and God, and love all in one!