In the before, before times, when I did not yet have the photography itch, my wife, son and I went for a Mother's Day hike in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. We choose an area that we really enjoy, but a trail we on which we had done been. We were not even a mile into the trail and we found some Pink Lady Slipper Orchids blooming along the trail. This was the first time that we had seen these orchids in the GSMNP. It was a wonderful find for us.
It's not approximately 10 years later. I have now been with my 'real' cameras for 5 or 6 years, but only one and a half with my K1. The weather was beautiful on Sunday. I knew the angle of the hillside the orchids had been, so we waited until later in the afternoon, then headed to the GSMNP. Since our last trek on this trail a bridge has washed out, and not been replaced. So the begging of the trails starts with a wade across a fairly broad, but shallow mountain stream. Then there is a strong steady climb up the ridge, first to the right, then to the left. Around three quarters or a mile I started to get excited, because I knew we had to be getting close to the patch of Pink Lady Slippers.
And there they were. In the same spot! Odd pink flowers poking their heads up from a cluster of green leaves in the forest floor. The evening sun was coming at a low angle from across the ridge tops.
We spent the next hour or so climbing over the hillside looking for the best specimens, for tight clusters, for beautiful pink bodies glowing in the sun. My wife searching, while I spent time photographing.
I was shooting the K1 with the D FA 100 Macro and D FA 50 Macro lenses. These are wonderfully sharp lenses that have the great modern sharpness and nice color rendering. They perfect lenses to take for shooting wildflowers in the forests of Appalachia.
But I also brought my beast of a lens - the 50-year-old Leica Macro-Elmar-R 100 f/4 bellows. I don't take it out into the woods that often. Unless I know specifically what I will use it for. The lens is sharp in the way excellent legacy glass is. It also has a wonder color rendering that modern glasses don't really replicate.
I spent another while lugging the thing on a tripod over hillside for a few shots.
Then my wife discovered something special. A Pink Lady Slipper that was just starting to emerge. It only had a slight pink tinge and was still wrapped inside the sepals.
After spending so much time with our heads on the forest floor, I looked up and realized the sun was getting close to descending over the ridgetops. We packed my stuff back up and head down the hill, through the fast moving stream and back to the car. It was another wonderful, if brief, time in the amazingly beautiful Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
Originally posted by ToddK 
Post #1 by tncasual
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