You Don’t Need a Bright Light

Don’t let anyone tell you that the sun needs to shine to get the best photographs. You can get exciting photographs are cloudy days, raining days and even after the sun has gone down…or before the sun comes…and at night too. You just need to use your imagination a bit..that is all.

Some of my best shots have been taken on cloudy, overcast days when I was waiting for the sun to come out. Even on dark dismal days you dismal days you can still get some pretty good shots.

For example, we were in North Carolina looking old grist miss. A lady at a visitor’s bureau told about one…which did not appear on any tourist guide. This is a good tip, talk to local people and ask them about certain things you may be looking for…the locals know where to find the best stuff.

Anyway, the lady said to take this paved side road and drive up the mountain…and eventually the road would turn to a gravel road..and when we came to a small campground the mill should be nearby.

So, we too off up this paved road…and sure enough it turned into a gravel road. But the lady did not say that the road would a very narrow road. Part way up we met this old pickup truck coming down towing a small travel trailer behind it. There were a couple of dogs in the back of the truck and there was not enough room  for the two vehicles to meet. So we backed up until we found a place wide enough for the truck and trailer to get past…which it did with just inches to spare.

We continued up this gravel road and came to the small campground. But now the sun had disappeared and it looked like could rain any moment. We did not see any grist mill so we we kept going up and up. Finally the gravel road ended and a sign said “End of State road.”

We were able to turn around and retrace our steps back to the campground where we stopped for a few minutes. I saw a mountain stream nearby and spent a few minutes taking some photos of it.

We continued down the road a quarter of a mile and suddenly there was the grist mill almost hidden by the trees. We had driven right past it coming up the mountain.  I took several shots of the mill and one  has turned out be one of my favorites.

We were lucky it did not rain and that we did not meet more campers on the road. The point here is to make the best of a not-so-good situation…and keep looking for other views to photograph. Patience will pay off.

I have included a photograph of the mill and one of the stream with this blog, both taken in very dim light late in the afternoon. If you encounter a scene like this and you have your camera set on automatic mode, aim it towards the darkest part of the scene to get the right exposure and detail in the photograph.

In the photograph of the stream, the bright areas in the background is not sunlight, but just lighter shade. Again, set your exposure to capture the detail in the dark areas.