Otterblog

We published some gorgeous photos this morning by David Rolfe, one of our photographers, of fall along the Blue Ridge Parkway. David is an incredibly gifted shooter, with an eye for landscapes and the relationship between the manmade and natural worlds (more on that at the bottom).

One of his shots was from a place called E.B. Jeffress Park, which is along the Parkway right at the place where Ashe, Watauga and Wilkes counties meet, mile marker 271 or so. It’s known for its Cascade Falls.

Most folks don’t know who E.B. Jeffress was, but everytime you drive the Parkway and marvel at A) its sheer beauty, B), its proximity to our front door and C) the incredible bargain it presents, you ought to thank him.

Here’s the deal: Edwin B. Jeffress was born in Canton, west of Asheville, in 1887. He graduated from UNC and began a career as a journalist, eventually becoming president of the company that published the Greensboro Daily News. Jeffress was a political broker, backing Max Gardner in his campaigns for governor. When Gardner won in 1928, he made Jeffress chairman of state highway commission, a forerunner to NC DOT. They were both instrumental in consolidating road building at the state level, rather than leaving it to individual counties.

Even then, politics were part of road construction. The original route for the parkway, which began as a public-works project in the Depression, was supposed to go through Virginia and the Great Smokies, bypassing North Carolina. Jeffress persuaded Interior Secretary Harold Ickes that the highway needed to follow the Eastern Continental Divide, which moved the road’s route to the south, to the route we’ve all come to know and love. And he also argued that it ought not to be a toll road.

So what happened to Jeffress? He was often mentioned as a candidate for governor, but an operation to remove a brain tumor in 1934 left him physically weakened and pushed him into semi-retirement. He died in 1961. The park in his honor was opened in 1968.

And that, as Paul H. says, is the rest of the story.

To backtrack for a second, I asked David for a few tips on shooting fall foliage. Here’s his response:

The approach to shooting good fall color is basically the same as shooting good photos generally.  Give your photo a dominant point of interest, and pay attention to the light.

1) Avoid general scenes.  A breathtaking expanse of colorful trees will still profit from a single point of focus, such as a lone red tree in a blanket of yellow ones, a rocky outcrop against a wall of color, or a starkly contrasting white trunk of a dead tree against a tapestry of lush colors.

2) Get in close.  Position yourself to have a single bright leaf or branch in the foreground or off to the side.  The eye is attracted to the close-up leaf, then slides easily into the rest of the scene.

3) Don’t shoot into the sun, or into the shadows… unless the colorful tree that caught your eye is nestled against a dark background.  In that case, move in close enough so that the tree is the brightest object in the scene.

4) Use a flash to light up leaves in a shady foreground, or from underneath the branches.

5) Don’t be afraid to make photos on rainy or foggy days.  You won’t get the sweeping panoramas, but you can still capture the rich colors of leaves up close, standing out against the hazy background fading softly into the distance.  A National Geographic photographer once said that bad weather makes good pictures.

My tip: Please don’t click while you’re trying to drive ...