Brent McGuirt Photography's photostream  

www.brentmcguirtphotography.com

Shenandaoh Valley
Near Raphine, Virginia
Hay Bales on Farm

I was heading to church a few weeks ago and thankfully I had my camera in the car with me. After coming around the curve about 3 miles from my house, I saw the fog breaking on this beautiful scene. It's cool to get a shot like this without having to do any work to get to it or even plan it out!

For information and tips on how I made this image, please check out my photoblog at: www.brentmcguirtphotography.com/blog/

You can also find me and like me on Facebook under "Brent McGuirt Photography" www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Brent-McGuirt-Photography/22431...

The last evening rays highlight House Mountain behind a farmstead near Raphine, VA in the Shenandoah Valley.

Pinnacle Rocks
Priest Wilderness Area
Blue Ridge Mountains
Virginia

Check out my website in the coming weeks. I am updating it and will start blogging a little with some photography tips with some of my images and explorations! I also hope to catch up with many of your streams soon now that we're getting a little more settled in the mountains!

www.brentmcguirtphotography.com

For photography tips from this outing, check out my blog: www.brentmcguirtphotography.com/blog/

I had a great time hiking with my family and Jeff Hammond's www.flickr.com/photos/58434043@N02/ family this past Saturday. I had been friends on flickr with Jeff for a while, but really enjoyed meeting him. We all hiked up to pinnacle rocks and explored this new area last Saturday. Jeff is really nice and knowledgable of the Blue Ridge Area since he's from Roanoke. Anyway, to get to this rock outcrop, I hiked about a mile and a half with my 27 pound daughter on my back and my 10 pound daughter on my front. That was quite a workout! Anyway, Jeff and I found this particular area, and since I'm all about a good foreground, I got really low to show off this really nice color and texture of the lichen on the rocks. This is definitely a beautiful place I'll have to hit for a sunrise in the spring under some epic light. I was about 8 inches off the ground with my camera for this image.

Blue Ridge Parkway
Raven's Roost Overlook (on cliff below)
Near Stuart's Draft, Virginia

On Saturday we had a great time hiking during the day with our new friends Jeff and Marjie Hammond. We found a really cool place called pinnacle rocks near the priest, and I got some nice shots there. After heading out from the hike, I decided to wait around at Raven's Roost overlook on the parkway to see if there would be a decent sunset. I climbed all around the rocks below the parking area, finally settling on shooting this outcrop. After waiting on the light, for a couple brief seconds the sun popped out and I was treated to this show! I really enjoyed using my new 3 stop reverse nd grad from Singh Ray that my wife bought me for Christmas. It worked perfectly in this scenario to hold back the light and allow the foreground to be properly exposed.

Shenandoah Valley
Near Raphine, VA

You are probably going to hate me when I tell you this, but I took this image out the window of the house we are living in right now. As you know, I recently took a pastorate in Lexington, VA, and one of the church members is letting us stay in his home since he works in Maryland, and he is staying in a really nice camper he has on the weekend behind church. He is letting us live here for 6-8 months while we try to get our house back in Colonial Heights rented out and find somewhere to live up here.

The first weekend when we moved up here, we had some really sweet snow conditions. This same evening I shot my " I spy" shot. I took this image with my lower grade zoom lens, so it's not quite as sharp as my normal images, but I think it turned out alright. You can definitely tell a big difference when comparing my canon efs zoom and my "L" high grade canon 17-40 I normally use for landscape work. I hope you all have a very merry Christmas!
This image looks great on black... please take a look!