10/10/2010: Doughton Park in the autumn. First looks at first selects from one weekend in October at North Carolina's Doughton State Park on the Blue Ridge Parkway near the Virginia border. More detail and larger versions of these photos to come. For now, have a look at some photos made during a trip Amy arranged to help celebrate my birthday. Thanks, Love.

Call it hubris. Only I would look at a colorful autumn maple and think, "a real photographer should be able to represent that in black and white." Best try so far.

That's "cell phone guy" making his way up the trail to the summit of Bluff Mountain. Would I have preferred that the trail be occupied by a couple of photogenic 20-somethings making their lovey-dovey way toward the summit instead of some middle aged cell-phone addict looking for three bars? You bet! But you take what you can get.

That's five, 30-second exposures aligned and stacked to show the summer Milky Way lingering over the autumnal landscape. 10-22mm Canon lens at 10mm, ISO 1600. No tripod: the camera was braced against a well- or utility-cover and focused using LiveView and Jupiter rising in the east. 30s x 5, ISO 1600, F4, 10-22mm Canon EFs @ 10mm. SQM showed the sky brightness at 21.2 magnitudes per square arc second (a good night in Rutherford College [10/30-31], with the Milky Way visible, is 19.4 or so). M22 and environs was brilliant; the Veil at minimum magnification and with the O-III filter showed some resemblance to its iconic appearance at Chaco Canyon with the same optics (at Rutherford College, I can barely make out Pickering's Triangle; at Doughton, it was relatively easy; at Chaco, it was simply there.)

So Amy and I went out hunting cell service so she could check in with her parents. Found good signal at Air Bellows Gap a few miles north of Doughton Park. When we got back, the light was doing this. Several frames in this sampler were made within a few minutes as the evening sunlight grazed the surface of the earth.

Near Air Bellows Gap, a mile or two south of the overlook, two or three north of the park.

Game trail through a meadow, passed on our half mile hike from the lodge to the restaurant for breakfast. Country ham and biscuits... oh, my.

In Scotland, they'd call these ferns "bracken." By whatever name: lovely color in a peaceful glade within sight and sound of the Blue Ridge Parkway.