Ice Cave

During my recent trip to West Virginia I finished the day at Blackwater Falls State Park.  The highlight of the day was shooting inside this ice cave.  The ice formed over the side of the cliff next to Elakala Falls.   The structure was about 20 feet deep and tall enough for me to stand up.  Judging from the footprints on the trail up to this cave I’m not the first one to enjoy shooting the beautiful structure. 

Shenandoah On Fire

This past Saturday I headed out on a day-long back roads scouting trip on the west side of the   Shenandoah National Park.  We were near Browntown, Va and noticed a fire in the distance.  As we drove closer it became obvious that the  northwestern part of the Park was on fire, not a large fire but a significant one.   We eventually made our way up a back road only to encounter the sheriff blocking access.  My friend Dan rolled down the window and within a minute or two had talked the sheriff into letting us get a closer look. 

While I was not happy to see the forest burn, I was hoping to get some dramatic shots.  We got a little closer and ran into fire trucks.  It appeared the firemen were still some distance from the fire.  I’m guessing they did not have direct access to the area that was burning.  We decided to turn back, we did not want to get in the way.  As we started back down, the park service was bringing in a dozer.  I suspect to try and create a road.   

The photo above was taken later in the afternoon on the east side of the park.  The smoke was drifting at least 10 miles to the east and could be seen much further away. 

Canaan Valley

 

Yesterday I decided to take a last minute day trip to Canaan Valley.  As I drove up the mountains the weather changed from sunny to snowing.   It is quite amazing that this area of West Virginia seems to have its own unique weather system.   As the day progressed the weather changed from snow to partly cloudy.   I tried to shoot the sunset at Blackwater Falls State Park.  The clouds leading up to sunset looked quite promising, but moments before the sun set the clouds blocked the sun.  

Web Site Update

I’m a year behind schedule, but I finally updated my site. As I mentioned in my last post, I spent a huge amount of free time going through the last 3 years of images. I found a nice mix of favorites that I have previously posted here on the blog as well as images that I have never shown before. My original site was designed in Dreamweaver, while this was much easier than writing it from scratch in HTML, I still found it to be fairly labor intensive and one of the reasons that I kept putting this project on the back burner.


I was drawn to WordPress because of my involvement with Nature Visions and the Mid Atlantic Nature Photography Expo. It took me a couple weeks to get my head around using a server based approach to web design rather than doing it on my PC and uploading the finished product. The cool thing about WordPress is that you can use themes to change the look and feel of your site. I decided on Photocrati. This one theme offers multiple designs and layouts. Once I decided on the theme I literally had the site up and running within a couple of hours. With the new site I can add photos and create new pages in a snap. I can also promise I will be adding new pictures on an ongoing basis rather than doing a major redesign every few years.


While WordPress is primarily a blogging platform, I really like Blogger and see no advantage to hosting my blog and web site on the same server. My blog here on Blogger will continue to be the primary outlet for posting my adventures and new work. One other item of note, my blog now reformats for mobile devices so you can follow along with Android or iPhone.


Head on over to Don Rosenberger Photography and check out the new layout and images.