The year is 2010, a decade ago. I was 21 years old, and I had just bought my first camera off eBay; a cheap compact Samsung HZ10W.
This is what this post will be about: a small collection of pictures I took with my first camera, after my pilgrimage from Cleveland to Asheville:
A single serving of images that serve to express a place, and document my early experiences & discoveries in the Southern Appalachian mountains.
[Looking Glass Rock]
A simple overlook snapshot.
[Sunshine Bluets]
[Serpent]
A black rat snake I met, close to the parkway overlook where the Looking Glass Rock was taken. Yes, I got him to pose like that by encroaching on his territory. I wrangled him, Steve Irwin style, and showed him off to tourists in the area. Crikey!
[Black Salamander]
Another critter shot! Mere feet away from the little sunshine bluet flowers, I stepped off the trail and flipped a log, expecting to find one of these. Sure enough; there he was. That was easy!
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[Things Are Lookin' Up]
I'll give y'all a break from the critter images, there's more later. But we can still play species identification games. The central tree is a tulip poplar.
[Do You Hear That?]
Following the sound of rushing water...
[Pipevine]
[Munching On Pipevine]
Pipevine Swallowtail larva on a large pipevine leaf
[Pipevine Swallowtail]
[Discovery of The Dark Prong]
We found the first waterfall!
["Kadoka Falls"]
In order to follow the stream we discovered that day, The Dark Prong, explorers must wade, rock hop, swim across deep pools, and climb over the waterfalls to progress toward the top. The steep, overgrown mountain bases on either side of the stream are often impassable, it often isn't a viable option to try to cut through the steep overgrown mountainsides to bypass a stretch of the stream. It isn't easy to take the water route, but it is still much easier than trying to follow the stream on land. This old 2010 photo of that first waterfall is my first attempt at using a tripod and long exposure techniques to show water motion.
[Before The Tree Fell]
It just so happens that this first discovery of this falls would be one of my last and only opportunities to photograph the waterfall in this condition... unobstructed. A couple months later, a very large tree fell right in front of the falls that has remained there since 2011.
[Small Falls #1, Spring Blue]
Keeping in line with the theme of only using images from 2010, this is another, very small shelf waterfall I found much further up the stream on a subsequent trip up the stream a couple weeks after the initial discovery.
[Small Falls #2, Summer Green]
Another image of the watershelf minature waterfall that I liked so much, a photograph that I took later that summer.
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[A Special Place]
I have much, much better images of this bend, one of my favorite sites to photograph along this stream. But this is the 2010 image, so this is the one I get to include in this set. I have an ongoing 10-year project of photos, videos, drone flights up The Dark Prong that I will someday finish and publish, and that is where I'll include the best footage I have from all the years since.
[Black Swallowtail]
This is perhaps the first swallowtail that I had raised in many years, from a caterpillar I found on a hike. A black swallowtail. Perhaps still the best image I have of this less-common species.
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[Nasturtium Droplet]
Perhaps my favorite image from this first year with a camera. I was very impressed with the "macro" quality of this cheap compact camera... and it was in the making of this image that I discovered the camera's strength at a closeup distance. The hydrophobic qualities of the nasturtium leaves allow for an interesting beading of water into perfect spheres. The nasturtium was shot on the back porch at the house I stayed in with Ernie here in Asheville.
[Looking Up Again]
This tower photo was taken from the bushwhacking adventure to investigate what I saw on the satellite images. On the way to debunk my "UFO", you could say.
[Atoof]
ATOOF "another take on an old favorite" -- as in yet another image of this small watershelf.
Thank you for following along on this reflective journey back to where I was in 2010.
I wrote a very long rambling personal, philosophical article about these images, but seeing as this group is more about the photography and my original post was very long, I've omitted most of the story here. That original post can be found here: @kadoka/77k7kc-2010-photography-collection-my-first-images-from-my-first-camera-10-years-ago-associated-stories-and-philosophical-musings