The American Southeast

  • Storm Light in Mammoth Cave National Park

    Bymichael

    Every photographer eventually builds a list of subjects that require a specific piece of equipment rather than a specific piece of landscape. Mammoth Cave National Park is the second cave in this series that belongs on that list — the Sony with its high ISO performance and its image stabilization is the enabling technology for photography inside the longest cave system on earth, where the light is artificial, the tripod is not permitted on most tours, and the passages extend for 420 surveyed miles beneath the Kentucky karst plateau.

  • Inside Congaree National Park

    Bymichael

    Congaree National Park protects the largest intact expanse of old-growth bottomland hardwood forest in the United States — 26,000 acres of floodplain forest in central South Carolina where the Congaree and Wateree Rivers deposit rich sediment that has allowed trees to grow to extraordinary size for centuries. The park contains the highest temperate deciduous forest canopy in North America, with loblolly pines, bald cypress, water tupelo, cherrybark oak, and sweetgum reaching heights that dwarf the surrounding managed timberlands.

  • Inside Shenandoah National Park

    Bymichael

    Some landscapes become part of our imagination long before we ever visit them. Shenandoah works differently. It becomes part of your imagination on the drive in — the moment Skyline Drive begins to climb the Blue Ridge and the valley below starts to fall away and the Appalachian ridgeline opens up on both sides, layered blue on blue on blue into the distance.

  • Finding Light in Great Smoky Mountains National Park

    Bymichael

    The Smokies suffer from a reputation problem among serious photographers. It is the most visited national park in the system — twelve to fourteen million visitors a year, nearly double Yosemite — and that number conjures images of traffic on Newfound Gap Road and crowded overlooks and the kind of experience that has nothing to do with solitude or light. All of that is real. But it is not the whole truth about the park.