Although my primary goal when hiking in the parks with my camera is to capture interesting landscape compositions, whenever I get an opportunity to photograph wildlife I do it. I’ve captured the occasional shot of a squirrel, dozens of shots of different types of birds, and, much rarer, I have gotten a photograph of a deer. Most of the parks where I hike either have no deer or they are quite scarce. Lake Conestee Nature Preserve, on the other hand, has quite a number of deer. The only problem is that they are skittish, and I usually only see them, either far away, or after they’ve seen me and are bolting through the forest to get away from me.
Read MoreOld Bridge New Spring
It had been a while since I visited Campbell’s Covered Bridge. By this point, I had taken dozens, perhaps hundreds, photos of the bridge and the surrounding area. I was beginning to think that all compositional possibilities had been exhausted.
Read MoreA Tree Named Silver Saved My Hide
When I was six years old, my father gave up farming on our little sharecropper's farm and got a factory job. We moved a few miles down the road to an old frame house with a tin roof, with the new luxury of running water. The house had a dirt front yard and an outhouse in back. It was a white house, sorely in need of paint, with a crumbling gray-colored front porch, a house quite close to the paved country road but surrounded by forest on three sides. Although small by today’s standards, it was a mansion compared to the three-room shack where I spent my first six years.
Read MoreBlinded By The Light
If you have the will to stand on high and solid ground, you can see clearly, past the fog, past the haze. You can position yourself as close to the edge as needed, to see as far into your world as is humanly possible. But if you're comfortable in the low slippery muck or on unstable soil, you may never dare to climb high and venture close to that edge. You may not even feel, or be willing to acknowledge, your trepidation. You may just decide that whatever is out there to see and do is just not worth the risk.
Read MoreSomebody Had The Right Idea
a red plastic chair
on metal legs
waiting there alone
by a cool emerald stream