Twilight Hike
The pictures I took on the Frank Scoggins Trail this winter gave me the opportunity to try out some photo-editing techniques.
One weekend towards the end of fall, I was rushing to get my hiking fix, and almost didn’t make it before the sun went down. I returned to a favorite hike in Caesar’s Head State Park, the Frank Coggins Trail. This trail is part of the Mountain Bridge Wilderness Area, situated near the end of the Cherokee Foothills Scenic Highway, Highway 11, north of Greenville. The trail is a moderate, hour-long trail, and it is a beginning to many of the other trails in the area.
I was afraid that the lack of light would be a problem, but it turned out to provide opportunities for some interesting views that I might not have seen during the daylight. The starkness of the winter trees against the bursts of fall color and fading blue sky were quite wonderful. Because of the lack of light, I found these images to also provide an opportunity to work with some software filters to bring back some of the color that I saw with my eyes that the camera just couldn’t get enough light to truly capture. I also just wanted to see what kinds of new imagery that the filters could bring out. I use GIMP as my software of choice, and there are a ton of filters and settings to play with.
I got off the trail just as the sun went down, and I ended up feeling that it was a peaceful ending to the day.
