Good Morning

DSC_4859, originally uploaded by knledford.

This photograph was taken near Shelbyville, TN. The sun came peeping over the hills and made for a beautiful shot as it showed itself, in perfect form I might add, over the top of this old country barn.

This photograph was taken while on a early morning day trip to Middle Tennessee with my good buddy Rachel. Rachel and I both grew up in and/or around Lookout Mountain, both of us still live within a half hour drive to the high topped wonder. Lookout Mountain is one of the prettiest along the App. Mountains, with some of the prettiest scenes known to man kind. Rachel & I, knowing this fact, packed our things on a Friday night, got nearly no sleep, awoke at 3:00am, and hit the road by 4:00am on our way to the Shelbyville/Franklin area. A trip that proved to be 3 hours of driving one way, a total trip time of 16 hours.

The plan was to be at a spot where we thought we might get a great sunrise shot, the break of day, first sign of the sun type of photo. Unfortunately we were just coming out of an Affle Waffle when we saw over the interstate, the sun beginning to rise. With no pretty anything in sight we knew we had missed our chance. After getting up at an inhumane hour we had missed the one thing we got up early to shoot. Granted, we missed it while just coming from the worst impression of a breakfast type cooking the south has ever seen. Both feeling a bit sick from the breakfast and the missed sunrise photo, we hopped into the truck and took off down the road.

We drove for what must have been 45 minutes before we came across a road that looked to be promising. A road neither of us had traveled before, a road just off of Hwy 41A N, a road that did indeed prove to be promising. Along this highway we found most of the locations we shot that day. We saw many "should've" shots, but taking into account they were on private property, and the fact that Rachel was most times scared to get out, we did not return home with as many award winning images as we could've.

Our first stop was the old barn, a very charming country barn, well used at one point in time, surrounded with cattle tracks frozen in the ground. We spent a half hour or more, capturing as best we could from the highway, the details and wide views of the barn and it's joining buildings. Nearly losing an eye to a small bush with large thorns and freezing our tails off from the 30 degree February cold. As we were leaving the old barn in search for our next location, we saw in our rear view mirrors, the sun coming alive atop the hillside. Slamming on the break, grabbing our cameras and jumping out of the car into the street, we got our sunrise photograph...and might I say, it was worth the wait!

to be continued...