Shenandoah National Park

Little Stony Man Overlook - Shenandoah National Park - Virginia
Copyright Andy Richards 2007 - All Rights Reserved

SHENANDOAH NATIONAL Park is the 4th (and last - at this time) U.S. National Park I have visited. It is also the only other besides GSMNP that I have been to more than once. There are 63 U.S. National Parks. I am pushing '70. I doubt there is much likelihood I will visit all of them.

I HAVE, however, visited a couple "units" managed by the National Park Service, like Manassas Battlefield Park, Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, and Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. There are 433 sites or units, including the 63 primary parks that are managed by the U.S. NPS. I would also like to visit a few other full Parks one day, however. Yosemite, Glacier, and Yellowstone have always felt like parks I would visit one day.

THE PARK

Little Stony Man Overlook - Shenandoah National Park - Virginia
Copyright Andy Richards 2007 - All Rights Reserved

MY FIRST visit to Shenandoah was a "day trip," in the middle of the summer. I was visiting my in-laws in Northern Virginia (suburban Washington, D. C.), as we often did during the summer months. My brother-in-law decided to take a drive up into the mountains and see the park. We decided to hike up to a well-known overlook, promising long and far views of the surrounding park. It was reasonably strenous, even nearly 20 years ago. Mid-day sun limits the images I was able to make, but since I was up there I had to make a few anyway.

Little Stony Man Overlook - Shenandoah National Park - Virginia
Copyright Andy Richards 2007 - All Rights Reserved

MY SECOND trip was in October, the same year. My wife and I went up for just an overnight stay in the Park to celebrate our anniversary. I made some time both in the evening and then again the next morning to do some shooting. A primary goal of this trip was to try to get a sunset image of the Blue Ridge Mountains. I was trying for that "layered" mountain range shot that proceeds and gets increasingly blue, dark and less detailed as it recedes in the distance. While I got something close, I didn't really get the shot I had planned in my minds-eye. It would be more than 15 years before I finally got a shot like that. When I did, it was in GSMNP from Kuwohi (formerly Clingmans Dome), on the Tennessee/NorthCarolina border). 

ONE OF the unique features of Shenandoah, is that it is mostly accessed from a single road: Skyline Drive, which runs over 100 miles north to south through the park from Front Royal, Virginia, all the way to The Blue Ridge Parkway, just west of Charlottesville, Virginia. It is the only public road in the Park. I haven't driven the entire length of it. Because our our near proximity (Northern Virginia/Washington, D.C. for many years) we would drive to Front Royal and then south from there. The furthest I have been is just a few miles south of Sklyland, where we stayed, to Big Meadows. That is about 1/2 of the way. There are numerous overlooks and hiking trails throughout and they no doubt create some good photo ops. I mainly stayed near the road, with the exception of the one evening when I hiked up to Stony Man for a sunset shot.

Sunrise - Shenandoah National Park - Virginia
Copyright Andy Richards 2007 - All Rights Reserved

THE NEXT morning, I got up well before sunrise and set out to try a couple spots I had semi-scouted for a sunrise shot. Much of the best overlook views, in my opinion (at least on the northern half of Skyline Drive) look to the west. This phenomena, along with some hazy morning conditions, meant I never really found a good sunrise image that trip. I did make a couple of sun "lit" shots. Both were to the west.

I ALSO walked out a road through the open meadow to a wooded spot toward the back, and made the "God Beams" image here. I have used that image as a banner background on prior iterations of my blog and website.

God Beams - Big Meadows - Shenandoah National Park - Virginia
Copyright Andy Richards 2007 - All Rights Reserved

I DID did see some wildlife. Black Bear are quite common in the Park and vicinity (enough so that a couple locals indicated they have reached a "nuisance" level). I guess that probably depends on your perspective. They most certainly were there first, though increased human presence (and particularly, food sources) have no doubt spurred a population increase. As I headed south on Skyline in the pre-dawn, I saw brake lights suddenly flash around the bend ahead of me. Windows down, I followed along just in time to see a mama bear and two cubs scramble quicly across the road in front of me and up the bank to my right. As they scrambled safely up to mama, she stopped and turned around to watch them (an probably me). Even if it had been daylight, there was no prayer of a shot, as they quickly moved into the woods and out of sight. But is is an everlasting memory.

A VERY short distance later, driving very slowly with my windows down in hopes of maybe spotting more bears, I heard an odd clickety-clackety sound. As I rounded the bend, I came upon two young whitetail bucks sparring - right in the middle of the road. They seemed pretty oblivious to my presence, but yet again, there was not enough daylight to even attempt a shot. Still, a fun morning.

Sunrise - Shenandoah National Park - Virginia
Copyright Andy Richards 2007 - All Rights Reserved

IT WAS a nice, albeit short trip. I think Shenandoah is one of those places you could do in a day (or two). Or if you wanted to immerse yourself you could hike, camp, and kayak or canoe for several days. Like all the parks, it would be very difficult to see all of it in only one trip and/or one day.

ACCOMODATIONS

THERE ARE very few accomodations in Shenandoah. At about the halfway point on Skyline Drive, there are two park operated facility with nice cabins for rent: Skyland and Big Meadows Lodge. We stayed at Skyland on our 2007 fall trip. The cabins look rustic, but are clean and had modern facilities. Both Skyland and Big Meadows have a nice restaurant which serves breakfast, lunch and dinner at posted time slots. We ate at Skyland and the food was very good. There is also a Taproom at each spot which is open from about mid-afternoon until 10:00 p.m. There are a couple of waysides and campstores that sell limited groceries.

IN OTHER places in the park (primarily at or near campgrounds) there are some limited availability rustic cabins that can be rented. There are also a couple campgrounds that allow both tent and RV camping. Some are by reservation only and some are first come, first served. It would be adviseable to check in with the NPS before planning a camping trip.

Skyline Drive, which runs over 100 miles north to south through the park from Front Royal, Virginia, all the way to The Blue Ridge Parkway, just west of Charlottesville, Virginia. It is the only public road in the Park

GETTING THERE

ALTHOUGH SKYLINE Drive is the only public road that traverses the park, there are actually 4 public road access points. The main entrances are at Front Royal, Virginia on the north, and Waynesboro, Virginia (about 20 miles west of Charlottesville) at the south end. Access from here is at or near the intersection of Interstate 64 and U.S. 250. Most will get there using I-64. To the north, Front Royal is right at the western terminus of I-66, just a short way from I-81. Most will come either from Washington, D.C. area on I-66, or from the west on I-81.

Looking Back 16 Years (Fall Imagery - 2009)

U.S. 2 in Michigan's Upper Peninsula (near the Cut River Bridge)
Copyright Andy Richards 2009
All Rights Reserved

OCTOBER 2009 was an exceptional year for me, photographically. We spent a week in Acadia National Park, in Bar Harbor, Maine with my buddy, Rich and spouses. Over the years, I have traveled on many photography shoots with Rich. More than any other companion. As I look at old photographs, I am very often reminded of him - and our good times together. We don't plan to stop. We just spent almost a week the Great Smoky Mountains National Park with our mutual friend, "the other Rich" from Vermont this past April.

Park Loop Road - Acadia National Park - Bar Harbor, Maine
Copyright Andy Richards 2009 - All Rights Reserved

BUSY SCHEDULES militated against us choosing the most ideal time of the year for Acadia (though in hindsight, we actually hit it pretty well). I was mildly disappointed to have missed so-called "peak" foliage that year. Shortly after we returned from Maine, I took a quick long weekend solo trip up to Michigan's Upper Peninsula ("U.P."). Only marginally pleased with the foliage in Acadia, I was determined to at least try to catch some of the color in the U.P (it turns out that after some recent review and new processing, the color in Acadia was really pretty impressive - just not the multi-shades and reds I have grown accustomed to seeing in Vermont and Northern Michigan. My favorite spot in Michigan's U.P. to stage from is Munising, Michigan, which was a 5 - 6 hour, relatively easy (good roads) drive from Saginaw, where we lived at the time. My work schedule was flexible enough that I could take off very early Friday morning and arrive in Munising in the afternoon, giving me 2 afternoon/evenings and two mornings for "good light" shooting. I did that "long-weekend" trip numerous times before we moved permanently to Florida.

Otter Beach morning - Acadia National Park - Bar Harbor, Maine
Copyright Andy Richards 2009 - All Rights Reserved

UNTIL RECENTLY, I had pretty much forgotten about that particular trip. The following year, we started traveling seriously, with our first cruise experience (to Alaska), and the many trips that followed shortly all over the world, probably overshadowed my U.P. experiences. Some of you may know that I have co-written a "book" with my good friend and talented photographer, Kerry Leibowitz, about photographing the U.P. Finding the eBook publishing game too burdensome for lots of reasons, we recently made the decision to discontinue its distribution on Amazon, Apple and other eBook publishers. Instead, we have elected - for the time being - to continue offering it on our own websites, as a freely downloadable pdf file (find it under "Pages" up in the right margin here, as "Photo Destination Books"). We think it had interest primarily (perhaps solely) from other photographers, and expect this distribution method, along with so-called "word of mouth," will suffice in the future.

Sugarloaf Mountain overlook - Lake Superior - Marquette, Michigan
Copyright Andy Richards 2009 - All Rights Reserved

MY REMINDER of the trip, and what motivated this post, was the recent "discovery" as I worked through my entire archives with a "keywording" project, in the 2009 archive folder, of some images which I had never gotten to (or perhaps more accurately, overlooked) in earlier rounds of post-processing. For the past 2 1/2 months I have undergone a complete review and restructure of my keywording process for my image archive. That meant looking at every one of my more than 55,000 archived images. The process has been - in numerous ways - an eye-opener for me. Germane to this post however, is that I frankly "missed" a few images. Part of that is the "fresh eyes" thing, I am sure. Another part of it is that in the 15 years between making these images and today, the digital post processing world has advanced proverbial "light years" ahead. In 2009, I was shooting with a 10 megapixel Nikon D200, "DX" (APS-C) sensor camera (as opposed tothe 40 mp "full frame" Sony a7rii I have shot with for the past several years, and even my "travel" Olympus camera is 20mp). I don't remember which version of Photoshop I used then, but it was well behind what we have at our fingertips today. The raw conversion engine was pretty elementary and most of my own "heavy lifting" was done in Photoshop itself. Back then, it was still impressive and I always kept in the back of my mind the possibility (probability, it turns out) that newer software develpments would allow us to do more - even with images we considered marginal at the time. So I always kept most of my stuff (to me, storage was cheap enough).

Sugar Loaf Mountain Overlook - Marquette, Michigan
Copyright Andy Richards 2009 - All Rights Reserved

IT HAS been great fun finding old images and being able to process them from scratch under the current Photoshop capabilities. In the past year or two, I have processed a few images I previously wouldn't have even bothered to try. At the same time, I found images that I am not sure why I never processed (or even "saw"). This post is solely made up of images made in October 2009 that I have recently uploaded to my LightCentricPhotography website and that I have never published before. While they may not be my "best," it was still fun finding them and realizing they had the potential to be processed with decent results.

Acadia National Park Seascape - Bar Harbor, Maine
Copyright Andy Richards 2009 - All Rights Reserved

I HAVE, of course, found others in other years' folders. I have always thought fall was "the time" for my most enjoyable photographic pursuit, and it is without doubt my personal favorite time of the year, though these days, living in the Tampa Bay area, it takes on a very different meaning. I have to travel for my fall photography now, and will be doing so soon - as I plan to spend a week in Vermont in October. You may notice a bit of a break here, as we board a plane bound for London for a week, and then a cruise ship bound for the Fjords of Norway for a few more days. Hopefully, I will have some more new material when I return, of two pretty different photographic venues, as well as an in-depth review of my somewhat newly acquired travel camera. For you, I hope many of you have travel plans for the upcoming fall season and will have a great chance to get out and shoot. Give me a few weeks, and as Arnold so famously said: "I'll be back!"

Working Boats of The World

Lobster Boats - Perkins Cove - Ogunquit, Maine
Copyright Andy Richards 2022 - All Rights Reserved

DURING THE past 15 years or so, my travels, particularly on cruise ships, have given me some unique opportunities to photograph seagoing vessels, and I have always been drawn to them.

It wasn't until many years later, in my 30's that I really began to appreciate the huge variety of "boats" in our world

IRONICALLY, I grew up in the middle of some of the largest "freshwater oceans" in the world: The Great Lakes. My home state was Michigan and for most of my youth, I lived in a city that was a major recreational port on Lake Michigan. The only true "working boats" we had were the occasional oil tanker bringing petroleum in to our above-ground storage tanks. If, like me, you were exposed to boats, but your primary exposure to was pleasure craft, you might not appreciate the working boats of the world. I am imagining my voice to be like popular comedian, Jeff Foxworthy in his "you just might be a redneck" schtick as I write this. Probably not very effective. Still, maybe to the point.

Fisherman's Wharf - San Francisco, California
Copyright Andy Richards 2011 - All Rights Reserved

GROWING UP, we had a sailboat moored at a harbor in Traverse City, Michigan, on one of the two great bays of Lake Michigan that the city sits at the base of. We also had grandparent cottages on two different inland lakes in Michigan where we had motor, sail and rowboats. All pleasure boats. I blogged about mostly pleasure boats a year or so back in "Whatever Floats Your Boat," but it wasn't until many years later, when I was in my late 30's, that I really began to appreciate the huge variety of "boats" in our world.

Really we would probably be more accurate describing them as seagoing or watergoing "vessels"

MOST SOURCES indicate that there well over thirty million boats in the world (approximately 60% of which are recreational). I was surprised to learn that approximately 50% of all of these boats are in the U.S. But there is that old saying about statistics. Just because 50% of the boats are owned in the U.S. doesn't mean that number of boats owned per population is the largest. Canadians own some nearly 9 million boats, in relation to their population of just over 41,000,000. The U.S. population, on the other hand, is 340 million. Interesting math. Canada has the most coastline of any country. The U.S., only ranks 10th in the world.

Cruise ships have given me some unique opportunities to photograph seagoing vessels

WE PROBABLY should stop here and attempt some definitions. A lot of us refer to waterborn vessels as "boats." Really we would be more accurate describing them as seagoing "vessels." Of those vessels, we generally divide them into two categories: boats and ships. If you try to look up definitions, you will find almost as many different ones as there are varieties of watercraft. There is no "official" definition or explanation of the difference. There are some generalizations. Ships are generally larger by a magnitude. Ships are generally designed as "ocean-going" (including within the definition of "ocean" large freshwater bodies like The Great Lakes). Ships generally have a commercial or military purpose. Boats are generally smaller, more local in their travel, and often recreational; though there are certainly working boats (fishing, transportation, and research).

Ships and Boats - Port of Livorno, Italy
Copyright Andy Richards 2013 - All Rights Reserved

THIS WAS originally going to be a single post, but as I was writing, I began to look again through my archives and realized that I have photographed a lot of these vessels. Enough that I eventually concluded that there are two many to try to cover in one post (this one is already ouot-of-control long). Over several weeks, I will post a series of related posts, featuring some of the working ships and boats I have photographed.