Happy “day after” Easter to each and everyone.  I hope you had a very fruitful weekend with family and friends and that the Easter Bunny was oh so good to you.

I was very fortunate to have everything wrapped up towards the end of the week and with nothing scheduled I decided to head west to spend Easter with my mother, father and my sisters family in Phoenix, AZ. There is nothing better than being with family over a holiday and this proved to me a very special Easter for me. With 5 great nieces and nephews to chase, I found out just how “young” I think I am.

One of the more difficult things to do, with all the recent travel I have had, is choosing what photo I am going to use for my blog. With so many things to choose from over the last couple of weeks, I had put this photograph on the back burner. A week or so ago I was up on Monte Sano Mountain and realized that the evenings’ sunset was going to be a good one. I did not realize at the time just how spectacular a sunset it was going to prove to be. I have photographed “a few” breathtaking sunsets during my residence in Alabama but I do believe this one had a to be in the top five of all time. As the sun disappeared below the horizon, it became more mesmerizing with every second of cloud movement.

To the beauty of Mother Natures Art!!

Looking for stock imagery, art for corporate or private collection, we may just have the image you are looking for. Images displayed in the blog are available for purchase along with thousands of other stock images we maintain.

Best regards ……….
~dK~

The last two weeks for me have been split between instructing at photographic workshops in Atlanta and Nashville and shooting assignments in Huntsville. 

One of the instructors, dear friend and “road tripping” buddy, Dave Hickey opted to hang out in Alabama with me between workshops. On one of the free days with absolutely beautiful Alabama spring weather I decided to take advantage of the day and show Dave around the area. So we jumped in the car and just followed the hood, looking for the perfect location to stop and photograph along our journey.

As luck would have it, the hood of the car led us to Guntersville, Al and to our first prize location, which was an old grain processing plant.  They have quite a few such plants in the area and this one proved to be quite the photographic subject. After a couple of hours capturing the essence of the plant, we decided to move on down the road looking for our next conquest. When you are ”photographic road tripping” and set the bar with a great first find, you may or may not come across another site of equal interest to shoot. That’s one of the rules and just the way we roll.

As we headed west towards Huntsville we jumped on to County Line Road 240, which goes through Union Grove.  One of the rules of “photographic road tripping” is that you never back track on the road you came down. As we came in to Union Grove, thinking we may go by the Guntersville Dam, I remembered a site I have stopped to attempt to shoot on many occasions.  It is a beautiful cascading waterfall directly behind the Union Grove BP station but one that is totally dependent on rain to fill the creek. With all the rain we had the previous week, we came across the waterfall raging in all of its abundant glory.

It is very rare, when road tripping, to come across two sites of such exceptional value but even more so to find two sites with such differing subject matter. The two sites provided a contrast of beauty; one defined my man and the other by Mother Nature. 

In the end it was the serenity of the waterfall that most captured my heart and soul.

Looking for stock imagery, art for corporate or private collection, we may just have the image you are looking for. Images displayed in the blog are available for purchase along with thousands of other stock images we maintain.

Best regards ……….
~dK~

Mother Nature threw us a curve ball of severe weather to start last week off and then treated us to a home run of beautiful weather and stunning sunsets. The stellar weather was most likely her form of an apology.

Last Tuesday I was heading up to Nashville to pick up a good friend of mine when he called to say his plane had been delayed for a couple of hours. So I am like, Great, with a beautiful day to drive and now time on my hands to kill, I slowed down to do what I love to do most, “photographic road tripping.” It is the art of total distraction driving in pursuit of a photographic visual awakening.

So as I head Hwy 53 towards Ardmore I pass this site I have passed hundreds of times, over many years, always thinking that it would be a cool place to shoot. But I never passed by with time to spare or when it was the  “right moment”. It was surely destiny that my friends plane was delayed because, as I turned around and approached the property, I realized my day had finally come.

The old homestead, with its many rows of barren orchard trees standing as sentry’s guarding the barn, is left with only twin fireplaces as a reminder of what once was. The trees surrounding the fireplaces were in their early stages of spring bloom with a new coat of fresh green leaves. It was the perfect time with the perfect lighting and the perfect moment. It was as if all my years of passing by had been set-aside for this precise moment in time.

It is a scene that is continually disappearing across the landscape of the south and has all but disappeared in most other regions of the country. It is the remnants of our ancestral heritage and the memories that accompany, fading into the limelight of our families’ heritages.

As I walked around the grounds looking for the prefect angle, I could not help but feel the sense of home and family that once thrived and flourished here. At that precise moment I realized that is times and encounters such as these that define us as self and give us pause to reflect on our relationships with family and friends. I wish you all fond and joyful memories.

Looking for stock imagery, art for corporate or private collection, we may just have the image you are looking for. Images displayed in the blog are available for purchase along with thousands of other stock images we maintain.

Best regards ……….
~dK~

Unless you were sleeping under a rock, this weekend was a weekend of weather perfection. Thank you Mother Nature … but then … comes Monday!

They come from distances near and far with dreams of exploration and instilled with hope and pride. They walk tall and speak a language foreign to most of us. They comprise over 80 teams from 22 states and 6 foreign countries of enterprising future engineers from high schools and colleges. They are the new breed of astronauts, participants in the Great MoonBuggy Race held each year sponsored by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and hosted at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center.

The competition commemorates the achievements of NASA’s Lunar Roving Vehicle and this year was the 40^th Anniversary of the inaugural trip on the Moons surface of Apollo 15. The goal of each team is to design, build and then reassemble a two-driver buggy capable of navigating a challenging course that simulates the harsh, rocky lunar surface while incurring the least number of course violations that result in penalties to their final score

This year’s competition included a very special spectator. Astronaut Charles Duke, the Apollo 16 Lunar Module pilot, who along with Astronaut John Young logged over 20 hours driving a Lunar Rover on the Moons’ surface in April of 1972.  When asked if he was tagged with any penalties (like the MoonBuggy participants maneuvering the course) while commanding the Moon buggy, he replied, “We pegged the needle a few times but no speeding tickets.”

The Great MoonBuggy Race is a testament to the ingenuity and desire that students around the globe exhibit today for the Space Program. I just hope we still have one when it comes their time to fulfill “their dreams.”

Looking for stock imagery, art for corporate or private collection, we may just have the image you are looking for. Images displayed in the blog are available for purchase along with thousands of other stock images we maintain.

Best regards ……….
~dK~