Posted on September 3, 2018, 10:54 am, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
Mammoth Cave National Park is generally a dry place. I explore a few out-of-the-way watery places within the park, while discussing some of the compositional strategies I used in those relatively plain scenes. Sloan’s Crossing Pond Water has made the longest cave in the world. The karst landscape of Mammoth Cave National Park is characterized […]
Posted on August 12, 2018, 11:20 pm, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
I have found the adage “Bad weather makes for good photographs” generally true. Cloudless days are not what I look forward to for daytime photography. There are two approaches to finding favorable weather conditions for landscape photography. You can go to a location based specifically on the weather forecast – the best is little-known Meteoblue […]
Posted on August 5, 2018, 11:28 pm, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
Shenandoah National Park is a long and skinny park. The Skyline Drive runs its entire length of 105 miles. For most of it, the road is never more than a few miles from the park’s boundary on both sides. For this reason, besides the Appalachian Trail that closely parallels the Skyline Drive, there are few […]
Posted on July 15, 2018, 5:59 pm, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
With more than 10 million visitors per year, Great Smoky Mountains National Park is the most visited of the national parks, and its most popular area is Cades Cove which receives over 2 million visits per year, more than many large entire parks. Cades Cove is so popular because it has a bit of everything […]
Posted on July 8, 2018, 3:15 pm, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
In this post, I revisit a firefly photograph in some detail, first comparing it to a similar image made with a different technique, then showing its components images to highlight firefly specifies within. Single exposure v. Digital composite I mentioned previously that there are two approaches to photograph fireflies together with the forest, a carefully […]
Posted on July 2, 2018, 8:19 am, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
Great Smoky Mountains National Park was once thought to be the only place in North America where the synchronous fireflies (Photinus carolinus) can be seen. Fittingly for the most visited national park in America, the event has become very popular, as described in the previous article. During my East Coast trip this spring, I observed […]
Posted on June 24, 2018, 5:12 pm, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
One of nature’s most wondrous light shows occurs during the synchronous fireflies mating season, when the bugs flash at once in a silent symphony of sparks. Synchronous fireflies exist only in a handful of places in the world, with Great Smoky Mountains National Park being the most well known. In this article, I explain how […]
Posted on May 14, 2018, 4:55 pm, by QT Luong, under
Resources.
Which are America’s most crowded national parks? Less crowded national parks? Can widely-publicized lists be trusted? Based on my visits, I have a good idea, but you don’t have to take my word for it. In my former career, I dealt with numbers quite a bit, and here I pull out precise answers by careful […]
Posted on April 29, 2018, 11:26 pm, by QT Luong, under
Esthetics.
In a previous post, I asked you for input in choosing the Gateway Arch National Park photograph to be included in the Treasured Lands exhibit. Back then, I did not comment on the images in order not to influence answers, so here are my thoughts, together with the poll results. Poll results Thank you to […]
Posted on April 21, 2018, 11:05 am, by QT Luong, under
Resources.
On National Park Week, you will get plenty of reminders of what makes the national parks one of our greatest treasures, and of how much they have to offer. In this post, instead, I will outline the many ways you can do something for them in return. While the links within are about the national […]
