Tennessee a few more...

After spending the day yesterday doing some consulting at Horizon Photography in Chesapeake City, I got a chance late last night to process a few more images from Tennessee. Then today I spent the day teaching for the Baltimore Camera School and I am just now getting back home to relax! Tomorrow is another teaching morning for the Camera School in the field...well hopefully the rain will stay away..if not we have an alternate plan....so I wanted to get these posted tonight.
About these images......The park service has reintroduced the native Elk into the Cataloochee area of The Smokey Mountains Park . We made a very long trip to the Cataloochee area and immediately upon entering the Cove we spotted the Elk grazing. There were tagged cows, but shortly after the cows were spotted the bull came from behind the brush, with a determined trot, and I was able to capture this image, hand held with the 70-200 mm at 200mm f 2.8. I loved the dead tree in the image as well.

 The little fern was made using the 200 mm Nikon macro lens.

 This little waterfall is a section of a larger fall but I liked the isolation of this particular section with its repetitive diagonal lines suggested by the rock formations.

 And who doesn't love an evening sky filled with gold and blue.

 Now this was an interesting find along the side of the river, a man made stone cairn....it brought some questions to mind: who left that there? how long ago? and why? well I will never know...but I had to make that picture.

 And "Hey Bear!" well they call them Bear Jams in the Smokies...and we saw plenty, this Mom was quite hungry and was snacking on some new growth vegetation as her little cub climbed a tree trunk near by. I made this image using the 70-200 mm lens hand held..waiting for her to raise her head above the vegetation so I could get a clear shot of her face. I love the Mountains of Tennessee! What great fun we had on this photo excursion.