People Seeing Without Observing

And in the naked light I saw

10,000 people maybe more

People talking without speaking

People hearing without listening

–From The Sound of Silence by Paul Simon

At this point it must appear, based on the last few entries I’ve posted on this blog, that I spent most of my time in the Smokies this past April confronting yahoos.  That’s not true; but I can certainly understand why it might seem that way.  I’ve simply used the handful of such encounters as an excuse to post some images from the trip thematically, rather than as a day-by-day or location-by-location chronology.

And yet…

Rhea Shrugged

On the morning of my first full day in the Smokies I decided to shoot sunrise from the Foothills Parkway.  The Parkway, which is managed by the National Park Service, has a section with a terminus just a few miles northwest of Townsend, Tennessee, and encompasses a series of scenic pullouts overlooking the Smokies to the south and east and the Tennessee Valley to the north and west.  From Townsend, it takes ten minutes, tops, to reach the first Smokies overlook.  I’ve visited this spot numerous times without ever seeing a brilliant sunrise, and in my continuing quest to do so, headed to the overlook in the early morning darkness on April 16.

Sunrise, Foothills Parkway, Tennessee

The overlook is beautiful, even without a phenomenal sunrise, but I enjoy having my cake and eating it too, so I was hopeful, based on the weather forecast, that something truly special might be in the offing that morning.

I was not disappointed.  There were broken clouds in the eastern sky and as the light came up I could see evidence of fog in the valley below me.  All the elements of a great sunrise scenic were firmly in place.

All of the images accompanying this post come from that morning’s shoot.  I have a number of others, but I just wanted to provide a taste of what I witnessed and captured that morning.   It was, by far, the best sunrise I’ve ever seen from the Foothills Parkway, and one of the nicest I’ve seen anywhere in a very long time.

Sunrise, Foothills Parkway, Tennessee

The first overlook on the Foothills Parkway, where I was stationed that morning, is a good-sized one.  I’ve often seen a dozen or more photographers at the spot for sunrise, and there’s no concern about anyone getting in the way of someone else.  On this morning, there were only two others, and they appeared to be shooting together; they were set up approximately 50 feet to my left.

When the sun cleared the mountains to the southeast, the other two photographers started to pack up their things.  I continued to shoot, because I’ve had some success with long lens landscapes from this location.  As they were gathering their belongings, I heard one of the photographers say to the other:

“Well, that was a shrug.”

He was referring to the sunrise.

The other responded:  “Yeah, that’s far from the best sunrise I’ve seen.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.  Maybe that’s because this was, hands down, the best sunrise I’d ever seen from the Foothills Parkway.  Perhaps the other photographers had seen better from this spot.  But, even though this wasn’t the most spectacular sunrise I’ve seen it was still breathtakingly beautiful.  I simply couldn’t–still can’t, in fact–believe that anyone who had experienced this sunrise would describe it as “a shrug,” regardless of their experiences.

Is it possible to reach a point where people become so numb to the natural beauty surrounding them that, even when they intentionally visit a spot specifically for its aesthetics, they’re unable to appreciate it, even when it rises up and slaps them directly in the face?

Sunrise, Foothills Parkway, Tennessee

Epilogue

After thinking about this for some time, I’ve come to the conclusion that, if someone becomes sufficiently jaded to the point of becoming bored or cynical about a natural event like the Foothills Parkway sunrise that I experienced on April 16 of this year, it’s time to put the camera away for awhile and reassess one’s feelings and reactions.  I’d like to think that, if this ever happens to me, I’ll take my own advice.

In the end, however, my real hope is that this is a problem I’ll never have to face.  It would mark the time when I began photographing for the sake of it, or photographing in an (undoubtedly unsuccessful) attempt to produce “trophy” imagery.  Those are things I never want to do because, if I ever begin to see things without observing them, it will be the point where meaning has faded into oblivion.

Sunrise, Foothills Parkway, Tennessee