When I travel to a place, I don’t plan my shots. Never have. I let the landscape talk to me, lead me wherever it wants. Last year during my winter travels in the Outer Banks that emphasis took me to Jockeys Ridge and photographing wind through sand. This winter, it was the Oregon Inlet. I just kept finding myself walking around the northern end of Pea Island for whatever reason. These are a couple of the Basnight Bridge carrying traffic across the inlet from Nags Head to the north and Hatteras to the south.
#marcbasnightbridge #oregoninlet
There’s no such thing as a “normal” year. Variation always exists within the natural world. On the other hand, there’s also general patterns. And this year has just been weird. Off. The bloom schedules have been way off, drought has been the norm throughout my travels, and the temps have been oscillating between hot as hell and cold as shit. Weird.
This was from my January trip to the Outer Banks. Low tide at the rock jetty along Oregon Inlet. These green rocks were a blast of color in an otherwise winter gray landscape. Every evening I would visit this location and while I worked up compositions a little coastal raccoon would emerge from the rocks and dig for seafood. He didn’t seem to mind my presence.
#marcbasnightbridge #oregoninlet
January kicked my ass this year. I traveled to the Outer Banks, as usual. The month started for me sick as a dog. Mother Nature didn’t toss me too many softballs and I never really caught my stride. This is a year when I really need some magic. I’m hoping that a slow start will build into something solid. One foot in front of the other…
#jennettespier
I got into a beautiful patch of fringed polygala (Gaywings) last spring in South Carolina. It took me about a year to get around to processing some out…better late than never? These little guys are S2 Imperiled in South Carolina according to NatureServe.
#gaywings #fringedpolygala
A seasonal capture I found last autumn while exploring around the headwaters of the Wild and Scenic Chattooga River in North Carolina’s Southern Blue Ridge Escarpment.
#chattooga
Waterfalls are a significant landscape feature in the Southern Appalachian Mountains. One of the most amazing amenities of this area is the ability to hike to any number of these beauties in a given day. I think I could spend the rest of my days exploring the forests and waterways with the camera!
From a rainy morning walk along the Wild & Scenic Chattooga River this past autumn. The Chattooga River corridor has always been a place with some magic for me. Difficult to photograph, I think, but all the more attractive for it.
#chattooga
Forest fairy lights. These beautiful webs were collecting the abundant moisture last summer within the cloud forests of the Southern Appalachian Mountains reminding me of string lights at night. I came to document the rare Appalachian Spruce-Fir Forests. I left with dozens of photos of water droplets on spider webs 🙃. Well, shit.
Photography has been kicking my ass lately. Or, perhaps life has been so busy that I haven’t been able to find my focus and sink into the process fully. Not sure, really. I’m way behind on processing and sharing. Here’s one from last autumn. I had the opportunity to spend four nights camping within the Cullasaja River Gorge during the seasonal color shift. The Cullasaja River is an interesting landscape feature, dammed at the top, bounded by development on all sides, and paralleled by a sinuous and incredibly busy roadway carrying traffic between Highlands and Franklin, North Carolina. When you drop down its steep banks, however, you’ll find wild water and an untamed spirit. It’s not an easy landscape to traverse. There’s wildness. I had a wonderful time and hope to return again to continue shaping some frame ideas I didn’t fully flesh out last autumn.
#cullasajarivergorge #northcarolina #southernblueridgeescarpment
A handful from 2025. A difficult year, but I’m still behind the camera. In a few days I’ll be clicking away with high hopes for 2026. I hope everyone else has a wonderful holiday season and many adventures to come behind the lens.
From the journal:
I napped. I don’t know how long. Hours. The steady sound of rain on my overshelter. The warmth of the down blanket that covers me. There’s nowhere to be, nowhere to go, nothing to do.
And just like that, the rain outside my tent slows. A window? A dragging fifteen minutes of patience and my mind is made: I’m going out with the camera.
I arrive at the Chattooga River via a well-graded dirt road that drops me into a forest of vibrant colors soaked through with the recent rains. It’s go time. I’m ridiculously excited. Humming. It’s irrational. No one is here. I’m alone in a colorful wonderland of trees and surrounded by the soundscape of water.
As I hop clumsily and quickly around puddles, across rain-bloated creeks and arrive a short distance later at a waterfall, I can’t help but notice how alive I feel. My senses are sharp. The adventure is so small in reality—and sandwiched between so much mundane boredom and waiting—yet it feels so damn gratifying. To be in this place at this moment…it’s what I dream about when I’m separated from this place—from the forest and the river and the sensory natural world. The photo, at this point, doesn’t even matter.
#chattoogariver #autumnwaterfall
