Foliage with Reflections at Lilly Pond

I have just returned from the White Mountains and the "MMT" photo tour. First you gone to ask what is "MMT"? This is the name the group gave to the tour, it means Missing Moose Tour. Why, despite all our efforts in looking at many moose wallows from early morning to late in the evening, on the tour, we did not see any moose. We however saw a number of signs of moose.

Anyway, I joined John Slonina http://www.sphotography.com and five other people as we traveled all over the white mountain area photographing the beautiful autumn foliage and other scenics of the area. What was interesting was the big variation in the foliage. A number of areas were passed peak and other areas even close by, and not even started to change. He would see this in the space of a few miles, but just changes in the elevation. We had a number of places off the usual sites that most people do not go to plus a good number of the usual sites. We woke up early, to Chase The Light and finished up after sunset. Sometimes, we got great light, and other times we struck out. Mother nature and the weather always plays a factor. Late morning, was our brunch break and supper was after we finished photographing in the evening. At that time was back to the hotel, download pictures, quickly look at him, I selected one to post on Facebook and then went to sleep since I had a be up ready to leave at 5:15 AM. John has been photographing in the white mountains for 20 to 30 years and knows all the back roads so that we could miss the traffic jams around North Conway on Route 16. In fact, I came up early on the first day to photograph along the Kancamangus Highway, since we did not have to meet at the hotel to 3 o'clock, and when I got to the end of the Kancamangus where it intersects with Route 16, the traffic was backed up, way down Route 16. So, I did a U-turn and went back up the Kancamangus and crossed over the Bear Notch Road, so I can get around the traffic and get to the hotel.

If you are thinking to go up toward the White Mountain Area, this coming week to photograph the foliage, keep your plans loose and even think of photographing further South around the Lake area, or even up Sunapee New Hampshire.

One of the nice things, about John's tour/workshop was his ability to get us to think out of the box. He had us changing lenses, positions, wide views, close-ups and other ways to improve our pictures.

Our group was great and we had a good time and it was sad leaving the beautiful area of the White Mountains.

The first set of pictures will be those that I took on the Kancamangus Highway in the White Mountains National Forest, on my way up to the tour.