Five Viewpoints for Photographing the Babcock Grist Mill

The Glade Creek Grist Mill at Babcock State Park is one of the most photographed sights in West Virginia drawing more than 200,000 people every year. You’ll find pictures of the mill at Babcock on calendars, postcards, magazines, and travel brochures. Most of the visitors to Babcock have a camera in their hands wanting to take home their own photos of this West Virginia icon. In photographing the Babcock Mill and the Glade Creek Falls for the last 15 years, I’ve learned that many points of view (pov) can be found to capture the falls and the mill, but generally most people settle for two traditional views.

View from the Rocks at the End of Stairs

For their first shot of the falls and the mill, most people traditionally take the stairs behind the lodge down to the pond and shoot from the rocks at the end of the stairs. From this pov both the falls and mill are close and produce good composition.

View from Sewell Road Opposite the Dam

Another traditional point of view is to walk down Sewell Road along Glade Creak on the opposite side of the parking lot and shoot back toward the mill and falls from the road. Good compositions along the road are possible until reaching the end of the pond and the small dam that forms it. From this pov, the falls and the mill adopt an eye pleasing alignment. With a little zoom added, the photo below shows the scene on the road directly above the dam.

View from the Dam below Sewell Road

Shots from these two traditional povs nearly always produce good results giving the falls and mill a serene look. However, I have experimented with three other povs that interject a different, perhaps more dynamic mood. For instance, to capitalize on reflections from the old swimming pool, I prefer to take a few shots at pool level. To get down to pool level, I take a short trail that begins at Sewell Road right above the dam and leads down to the dam abutment below the road. Safe set-ups can be made on the end of the dam or just behind it. The resulting pov offers better reflections of the pool and interesting views of the stone retaining wall below Sewell Road. The example photograph shows the scene from this location. 

View from the Lip of the Falls of Glade Creek

After shooting from pool level, I usually climb back up to Sewell Road and walk about half-way up it. Right at the rim of the falls, there’s a short trail from the road leading down to the lip of the falls. It’s not a precarious position and offers a pov that profiles the falls. The grist mill is partially obscured, but I don’t think this takes away anything  from a photo taken here. Below is an example of the scene from this pov.

View from the Large Rock in Glade Creek

The last set-up I’d like to mention is taken from atop the large rock that sits in the middle of Glade Creek and appears in the upper right of the photo above. In my opinion setting-up on this rock yields a good pov because stream action in Glade Creek and the mill are highlighted. Images from this pov are dynamic and attention grabbing. 

The mill and falls at Babcock State Park look good from just about any pov. These five spots are just suggestions.  There are many other fine locations such as on the grass on the parking lot side of the Glade Creek and down at creek level on this side. Furthermore, when Catawba Rhododendrons are blooming, povs including them are going to make good photographs, too. So relax and enjoy photographing Babcock. The Park will almost certainly reward your efforts. 

For more about the mill at Babcock see this blog entry Five Facts about the Mill at Babcock.

Photoessay: A Hike Around Boley Lake, Babcock State Park

The Lake View Trail makes a mile long circuit around Boley Lake in Babcock State Park. I hiked this trail last week in search of autumn colors. Fall foliage color was limited on the south side of the lake because the trail wound and tunneled through a lot of rhododendron. But the north side was pretty. Below are a few examples of color I found along the trail. Hope you enjoy the hike!

Boley Lake, Oct. 2012

I might add that the lake is often ignored by photographers who come to Babcock seeking autumn colors. On any given day, the grist mill is cramped with photographers and visitors. It’s very difficult to get off a shot without someone in the frame. On the day I visited the park, this was true. But when I drove up to Boley Lake, the parking lot was empty! As I mentioned in a prior post, there is so much more to Babcock than the mill. Post of October 11, 2016. 

Boathouse

Lake View Trail

Lake View Trail

Lake View Trail

Lake View Trail

Seven Ways to Capture Brilliant Color in Fall Photography

How do you get good autumn photographs even if the fall foliage lacks brilliance? I was asking this question all day at one of my (and everyone else’s) favorite places to shoot fall photographs—Babcock State Park, Fayette County, WV. Due to an extremely hot and dry summer, the leaf color change has been muted somewhat and delayed by about a week. Even so, here are seven ways to photograph fall scenes to bring out the very best in autumn color. 

Bright Foreground

Bright Foreground 

One way to spruce up the color is to include bright foreground foliage. An overhanging branch or a small shrub work well in this instance. As a bonus, these foreground elements add depth to the work and can act as natural frames. 

Back-lighting

Use Back Light

Nothing lights up leaves like back-lighting, which is simply having the prime light source behind or in back of the subject. In outdoor photography, the sun is the primary light source, so to get autumn leaves to shine for you simply align the fall foliage between you and the sun. This technique brings out rich color even in leaves that are dull or past prime.

Underexpose

Underexpose the Image

Overexposures wash out color. So it stands to reason that to boost color saturation, underexposure is called for. Depending upon the intensity of the light, I will adjust the EV (Exposure Value) down by 1/3 to 1 to get the richest color. Decreasing the EV also makes sunlit leaves stand out by darkening the areas surrounding them.

Adjust White Balance

Adjust White Balance

White balance settings on your camera compensate for the kind of light illuminating the scene you are shooting. As evidenced by the color of the sky, a sunny day sheds a lot of blue light. If your photographs have a blue cast to them or if colors look duller than you remember them, experiment with white balance. To get deeper reds and yellows, I generally set my white balance to shade or cloudy if I’m not shooting in raw format. 

Take Close-ups

Take Close-ups/Isolations

Even if leaf color is subdued, there are always bright trees among the dull ones. Isolating the leaves of a colorful tree with a close-up will often produce a compelling fall photograph. Tight close-ups can make an abstract image out of the leaves adding to the artistry of fall photography. 

Look for Reflections

Look for Reflections

Reflections darken and enrich colors. So I am always looking for ways to catch the color of autumn leaves bouncing off the surface of lakes and streams. It’s fun to study a stream, locate the colorful leaves, and work out the angles to catch the colors in a reflection. And the results can be very satisfying. Just like isolating leaves, close-ups of reflections can produce stunning abstract images. 

Find Fallen Leaves

Find Fallen Leaves

Even if the leaves on the trees lack brilliance, you can always add dashes of color and interest to a fall image by photographing fallen leaves.  Fallen leaves often gather in clusters that form a tapestry of color. Photographing leaves on wet rocks add color and foreground interest. In addition, fallen leaves also tell a story of the changing of the season.

All of the examples in this post were taken on the same day at Babcock. Despite less than peak conditions, I enjoyed roaming the park and applying the seven tips I’ve included here. Autumn is a wonderful time to be a photographer. I hope these tips help you savor it.  

Fall Colors in Southern West Virginia

In chasing fall colors in West Virginia, you generally move from high elevation to low elevation and from north to south. By mid-October the leaves are beginning to change in southern West Virginia. Here are some suggested locales to catch the fall colors.

Babcock State Park 

Babcock State Park in Fayette County is well known for gorgeous autumn displays, but timing is crucial. Usually I find mid-October, around the 15th to the 18th, the most resplendent time. But this year the color change has been delayed a week to 10 days. I’m guessing that peak at Babcock might be this coming weekend Oct 21-23rd. 

Babcock State Park

Since photographers flock to the Glade Creek Grist Mill, finding a view unobstructed by other photographers is a challenge. Not seeing many photographers on the shoulder of the dam across Glade Creek, I have found that spot a good place to take advantage of reflections off the pond below the lodge. 

Babcock State Park

For ideas on other places at Babcock to enjoy and photograph fall colors, please see my blog post of October 11, 2016. 

Grandview National Park 

Because Grandview National Park is a little lower in elevation than Babcock, I expect the color change will follow that at Babcock. A great place to view fall colors is at the main overlook. From the main overlook, the colors in the New River Gorge from top to bottom illustrate how profoundly elevation influences color change. Green can dominate the bottom of the gorge, while at the top, fall colors can already be fading. Being at the main overlook at the top of the gorge, I found the best angle I could to catch some color there. 

Grandview Park

Little Beaver State Park

After stopping at Grandview, it’s just a quick 7 mile trip down the road to Little Beaver State Park. Good autumn color generally abounds there. I like the Lake Front Trail that circles Little Beaver Lake. The trail presents many fine photo opportunities of reflections off the lake. 

Little Beaver State Park

Pipestem State Park

Although I haven’t been to Pipestem in the fall for many years, I suspect it would also be a fine place to pick up autumn colors. The aerial tram can take you to the bottom of the Bluestone gorge if the colors are good at lower elevations. If it’s still green at the bottom, the top of the gorge should be good since the change in elevation on the tram is 1100 feet! Liking reflections, I would also try the Lake Shore Trail around Long Branch Lake. 

Plum Orchard Lake

Plum Orchard Lake

Plum Orchard Lake is a 202-acre impoundment in the almost 3000-acre Plum Orchard Lake Wildlife Management Area located 5 miles north of Pax in Fayette County. Though known primarily for its fishing, this is a good fall color locale, too. There’s access by road along the north side of the lake and part of the south side. There are some docks that extend into the lake that make good photographic compositions.

Plum Orchard Lake

Webcams: Babcock Webcam  Pipestem Webcam

SHARE YOUR FAVORITE PLACE IN THE COMMENTS.

Autumn Colors at Babcock: Places beyond the Mill

Although the grist mill at Babcock is a photo favorite, there are plenty of places beyond the mill that look great in autumn colors.

Swinging Bridge at Babcock

The Swinging Bridge

The swinging bridge over Glade Creek is a great place to capture fall colors at Babcock. While other photographers are vying for position at the mill, walk down the road by the mill to Cabin #7. Then take the stairs down to the cabin and walk around to the back of the cabin. You’ll find a path leading down to the swinging bridge. Glade Creek really shows off at this point with plenty of cascades and color. With the bridge as a backdrop, you’ll find plenty of compelling compositions. Isolations and reflections off the creek will keep you busy, too. 

Swinging Bridge at Babcock

Glade Creek Reflections

Mann’s Creek

Glade isn’t the only creek at Babcock. Mann’s Creek flows through the park, too, and is photogenic as well. I’ve found some good color and compositions at the bridge crossing the creek near the Narrow Gauge Trailhead. In addition, a little beyond the campground trailhead, the Mann’s Creek Gorge Trail parallels the banks of the creek offering some fine opportunities for fall shots. 

Manns Creek

Manns Creek

Boley Lake

Often overlooked by shutterbugs at Babcock, Boley Lake offers some fine prospects for fall photography. Just take the road up the hill behind the mill for about a half a mile. The lake is on the left. The Lake View Trail is a level, easy, mile long loop around the lake. If the colors are good at the grist mill, I’ve found them to be good at the lake, too. Reflections off the lake surface make for nice fall photographs. This is a fine spot to just unwind and stroll through autumn’s splendor. 

Boley Lake

Boley Lake

Park Roads

Every autumn I drive the road out to the Manns Creek Picnic Area because it is absolutely golden. There are some reds and oranges, too, but for the most part the forest nearly glows with golden tones. Actually, all the roads in Babcock shine with fall foliage. 

Road to the Cabins

If you’re visiting Babcock for autumn colors by all means visit the mill. But remember that there’s also plenty of picturesque places besides the mill. Indeed, Babcock is a jewel in autumn that shines wherever you choose to go. 

Swinging Bridge at Babcock

Here’s a link to a Map of Babcock and a link to a Webcam so you can keep tabs on the leaf color. 

Why Do Autumn Leaves Change Color: Part 1

Why do autumn leaves change color? What controls the change, and why are the colors so different from year to year? Though I am far from an expert, the following is what I have been able to learn about the subject. 

Highland Scenic Highway

Three Prime Factors
The reason autumn leaves change color is far from simple. Some factors are well known, but scientists admittedly do not have all the details. The three prime factors controlling the color change are: 1) Leaf pigments, 2) Amount of light, and 3) Weather conditions. The color palette of leaves consists of three main pigments: chlorophyll, carotenoids, and anthocyanin. 

Babcock State Park

Chlorophyll is the green pigment, so to speak, and is essential for plant growth. Chlorophyll is an exceptional substance that converts sunlight into food for plants in a process called photosynthesis. Using energy from sunlight, chlorophyll combines water and carbon dioxide to produce oxygen and sugars. The oxygen mingles with the air we breathe and helps to sustain human life, which depends upon oxygen. The sugars are sent from the leaf into the tree to help it live, grow, and reproduce.

Leaves remain green as long as chlorophyll is plentiful. But chlorophyll is not a stable compound; bright sunlight causes it to decompose. To maintain chlorophyll in their leaves, plants continuously produce it, which requires sunlight and warm temperatures. Therefore, during the summer, chlorophyll in leaves is continuously broken down and regenerated. The trees of summer owe their lush green leaves to the abundance of chlorophyll in their leaves, which is constantly being destroyed and renewed by the summer sun.

Swinging Bridge at Babcock State Park

Yellow, the Left-Over Color
This leads to the second major factor determining the color change–light. As fall approaches, the days shorten, the amount of sunlight wanes, and the air cools. Like an internal clock, shorter days signal leaves to begin to shut down their food production. The shorter days mean more chlorophyll dies than is replaced. As chlorophyll begins to die off, other leaf pigments, which are masked by the green of the chlorophyll, are revealed. 

Aspen at Summit Lake

Present in the leaves all summer long, shades of yellow from the carotenoids finally begin to show through. Carotenoids produce yellow, orange, and brown colors in such plants as corn, carrots, daffodils, rutabagas, buttercups, and bananas. Striped maple, birch, aspen, hickory, poplar, ash, and other trees glow in shades of deep gold to pale yellow because of the carotenoids in their leaves. Ironically, the beautiful yellows and golds of autumn leaves are colors left over after all the chlorophyll has died out.

Summit Lake near Richwood, WV

In a post to follow I’ll discuss why leaves turn red.
For more on this topic click Why Leaves Change Color

For Better Scenic Photographs, Frame Your Photo Naturally

You can also polish the look of your outdoor photographs with a simple composition technique called “framing.” Just as paintings and photographs are typically surrounded by wood or metal frames, a photographic image can be taken with natural borders or frames. For example, the image of an inlet at Summit Lake (a great fishing and hiking spot about 10 miles east of Richwood, WV) is encircled on the top and left side by an arch of autumn leaves that form a natural frame. Likewise shoots of green plants border the bottom of the image. These two borders envelope much of the image forming a natural frame. 

Babcock Grist Mill

I don’t know exactly why the eye is pleased by framing, but it generally is. I do know that natural frames seem to complete the image. Framing also draws attention to the subject of your image. The framing in the example photograph gently steers the eye across the image. Moving from left to right, the eye naturally drifts within the borders of the frames following the line of the lake inlet to the patch of wispy clouds. Just about anything can serve as an image frame. 

Summit Lake

Trees, limbs, shrubs, and rocks frame a lot of my photographs as shown in the image of the Grist Mill at Babcock. Windows, arches, and doorways can also work as frames. Two stone pillars form frames for my photo of the swinging bridge at Babcock. I believe that once you start looking for objects to frame your images, you’ll find them and use them to make your photographs more appealing.

Swinging Bridge at Babcock

Regardless of the type of camera you use, good composition will always improve your scenic photography. So remember these four composition tips: 1) Remember the Rule of Thirds, 2) Think in 3D, 3) Change the Point of View, and 4) Include Natural Frames. Landscape photographer Ansel Adams once said, “A good photograph is knowing where to stand.” Knowing the basics of photographic composition will help you choose a place to stand.

Five Facts about the Mill at Babcock State Park

1)   The Glade Creek Grist Mill at Babcock State Park is one of the most photographed sights in West Virginia. You’ll find pictures of the mill on calendars and postcards, in magazines and travel brochures. The grist mill is a great ambassador of travel and tourism for southern West Virginia. Indeed more than 200,000 people visit Babcock every year.

Babcock State Park

2)   The grist mill at Babcock is really three mills in one, which were salvaged from around the State. The Stoney Creek Grist Mill, dating back to the 1890s, near Campbelltown in Pocahontas County and the Onego Grist Mill near Seneca Rocks in Pendleton County supplied the main building and stone floor. The giant overshot water wheel was salvaged from the Spring Run Grist Mill near Petersburg in Grant County after the remainder of the mill was destroyed by fire. Portions of each mill were disassembled piece-by-piece and reassembled on Glade Creek in Babcock. The reconstruction was completed in 1976.

Stoney Creek Mill

Onego Grist Mill

3)   As mentioned in the Babcock State Park Brochure, the mill is a “living monument to the over 500 mills which thrived in West Virginia at the turn of the century.” It replaces a mill which “once ground grain on Glade Creek long before Babcock became a state park. Known as Cooper's Mill, it stood on the present location of the park's administration building parking lot” and served the area around the turn of the century. http://www.babcocksp.com/gristmill.html  

4)   The mill is fully operational and even has two “different sets of stones . . . the heavier (1200 lbs) for grinding wheat, and the other (1000 lbs) for grinding corn and buckwheat” (John Northeimer). Visitors can purchase freshly ground yellow corn, white corn, buckwheat, and prairie wheat prepared right at the mill.

Grist Mill in Summer

5)   The best times of the year to photograph the mill are May and October. About the third weekend in May the Catawba Rhododendron reach their peak and provide beautiful foreground for the mill. Gorgeous autumn foliage peaks at Babcock on average around the middle of October—from the 15^th to the 18^th. This is around the same time that Bridge Day is scheduled.

Grist Mill in Autumn

For more about exploring Babcock see my new book at this link Exploring the Wilds of West Virginia.

Orchids at Babcock State Park

Mention Babcock State Park and most people immediately think of the Glade Creek Grist Mill. Visited by more than 200,000 people every year, the mill is one of the most photographed sights in West Virginia.

But there’s more to Babcock than the mill. Waiting to be explored is a Babcock that most visitors never see--it’s behind the scenes so to speak. As it turns out, Babcock has some of the most interesting and diverse hiking trails in southern West Virginia. Moreover, it is home to some amazing flowering shrubs such as Catawba Rhododendron and Flame Azalea as well as wildflowers such as orchids and trillium. You just need to know when and where to look for them.

Today I want to talk about orchids at Babcock. Yes, wild orchids! In the spring, a popular wild orchid called Pink Lady’s Slipper is sprinkled throughout Babcock. But yesterday (August 2, 2016), Phyllis and I went looking for and found a rarer sight—yellow fringed orchids. Besides Babcock, I know of only two other locations in the New River Gorge.

It is a small plant, about a foot tall, yet exceedingly colorful. The flowers are a brilliant orange with delicate yellow fringes. They are about an inch long and dozens of them hang from a central stem. Blooming time is generally the first and second weeks of August. They are at peak bloom right now.

To find these orchids from the Babcock campground entrance, turn left on to Old Clifftop road. After about 1/4 mile turn left onto Camp Carver Road. After going about 200 feet look to the right for a road with a gate. The flowers are right there in a small clearing (GPS: Lat. 38.00805, Long. -80.95302). For a full color guidebook of Babcock State Park see http://www.blurb.com/b/5541280-explore-wv.

PS. On the way home from Babcock we spotted some Tiger Lilies by the side of the road. They are on WV route 41 near Layland about 100 yards south of Bowyer Mine Supply on the left side of the road as you’re heading to Beckley. GPS location: Lat. 37.89348, Long. -80.97048. There were plenty of blooms and the promise of a lot more to come.