Photographing Changing Light

Here in Kentucky, the back roads tend to loop around in a seemingly chaotic chorus of twists and turns.  On numerous occasions, I've found my self well maybe not lost...just turned around and confused as to where I really was at the moment.  Drive around long enough and those looping roads will probably reconnect to a more familiar main road someplace.

On one such recent adventure that happened again...only this time it turned out to be a good thing.  The last few weeks a lot of foggy mornings had tempted me to an early rise and to head out to find a great photographic moment.  What I wanted was a high vantage point...but someplace I had not tried before...or at least recently.

Last Saturday morning I headed over toward Shanty Hollow Lake...a favorite canoeing place of mine...hoping to take advantage of the higher vantage points along the old highway 185.  Well, to get there I must navigate a series of lesser roads...roads I've traveled several times and know pretty well.  But, on this morning the fog was a bit thicker than usual and when I came upon a fork in the road where I normally take the left fork...I completely missed it and went right instead.

I drove about a half mile before I realized my mistake...by then I just decided to keep on going and see what I could find.  A few miles later I drove past a nice looking large pond that appeared rather ghostly out of the fog.  I turned around and parked on the back side of it down another side road and gathered my camera gear.

The sun was a good 30 minutes yet from rising, but with the subdued light and misty conditions the photographic value of the moment was very high.  I spent the next 45 minutes shooting as the light seemed to change every couple or so.  It went from gray to blue to lavender to golden and back to gray.  The only filter used was a graduated neutral density filter to blend the sky with the water reflections.

Before I pulled out that morning shoot turned out to be one of the best of the summer and a prime example of how light can rapidly change...and all because of a wrong turn.

Here's a link to see more of the mornings shoot:
http://www.sunnysixteen.org/gallery3/index.php/Keith_Bridgman/Kentucky-Summer---2