Delightfully Lost in Virginia
It was both exhilarating and exasperating to not know where I was going. Having a phone with me meant I was never really lost, but my unfamiliarity with the area around Roanoke meant that finding an exciting composition to shoot would be challenging at best.
I agreed to drive someone 7 hours to Roanoke VA so they would not have to fly during this time of great uncertainty. It was not entirely a selfless endeavor. I was driving back the next day and I knew enough about western Virginia to know that there are some great landscapes there. Accordingly, I brought my camera and tripod with me and planned to wake up early to shoot before heading back to the New York area. Normally, I do enough research to have a pretty good sense of where I want to go and what kind of image I am trying to create but a day behind the wheel left me with little time to check Google Maps.
I set my alarm for 4:30AM and checked out one possible architectural subject in town, the Taubman Museum of Art, a modern structure that is reminiscent of several Frank Gehry buildings (see photo below). I really could not find a great angle to shoot the building from and I figured I should try to capture some of the surrounding landscape since it is so different than the greater NY area. I headed west up into the hills surrounding Roanoke, hoping I would get lucky and stumble across a fantastic landscape as the sun rose over the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Taubman Museum (not my image)
On my way out of town, I passed this lonely little market that seemed to call out to me in the dark. I had to make a quick stop and grab this shot.
Leaving Roanoke, I found a quiet country road about 40 minutes outside of town and as the sky began to slowly brighten, I could see some fog and mist in the valley. I immediately saw the potential for a great shot but mist in a valley is not enough. You need a good composition — maybe something interesting in the foreground or objects that can serve as leading lines in the frame. It looked like the road went on for several miles but I had no idea what the best place to stop would be. Ideally, I would stop every 100 yards or so but I knew that the mist would not last forever and after the sun rose the light might become too harsh. Given that I had no plans to be in Roanoke again any time soon, I felt growing pressure to come away with a good shot.
Luckily there were no other cars on the road so I kept driving with one eye on the road and the other on the changing sky and scenery stopping whenever something caught my eye.
Foreground interest came hard to come by so I broke out my long lens (70-200mm) and tried to capture some of hillsides that still had fog and mist interwoven in the trees. I also stopped using my tripod so I could pop out of the car and quickly take more shots. I had to boost my ISO to about 2,000 but the image quality was still OK.
After the sun had risen, the fog hung around and I was able to get some moody shots of the sun struggling to break through the haze. I didn’t catch any killer, award winning shots but they ended up being respectable and fairly representative of the region.
After my 2 hours of shooting, I realized I still had to drive 7 hours on just 4 hours of sleep. A power nap in my car in back of a closed Red Lobster left me revitalized enough to make my way home. I stopped in Lexington VA for a quick “social distanced” breakfast and snapped several images of this quaint, charming town — a recommended stop if you find yourself driving on Route 81 in Virginia. I had planned to make other stops along the way home, but every time I stopped my car, it was to fuel up with caffeine.
Check out my YouTube channel for the “Behind the Shot” video for these images! https://youtu.be/pWm_ijTApX8
Jay
