Hello! I’m Mark, an Outdoor Photographer.

The Outer Banks are a narrow chain of barrier islands off the coast of North Carolina. They’re unique for their great distance from the mainland (thirty to forty miles in spots) and their physical shape (cuspate forelands, or capes).  The physical landscape is a study in energy: waves, winds, tides, and the storms that set them all into chaotic motion.  Change is the constant. The Outer Banks, for me, are the rare place where the physical environment is still dominant; it cannot be ignored.

The Blue Ridge Parkway is a linear park, the longest in the United States at 469 miles.  It serves to connect Shenandoah National Park in Virginia to Great Smoky Mountains National Park in North Carolina.  More than just a scenic roadway, the Blue Ridge Parkway is unique for its exceptional display of biodiversity, especially towards the southern end. The Blue Ridge Parkway forms, for me, a largely unbroken green corridor from my home in Virginia right into the beautiful and mysterious heart of Southern Appalachia.  I travel it’s borderless, gateless, gently sinuous length several times every year and always find the roadway to provide moments of magic and discovery.

The Blue Ridge Escarpment–known by the Cherokee as “The Blue Wall”–is the southeastern edge of the Appalachian range.  Characterized primarily by gorges, rivers, and waterfalls, the escarpment is a dramatic, steep transition zone between the Blue Ridge Mountains in Western North Carolina above and the Piedmont of South Carolina and Georgia below.  Reputedly the wettest area in the east, the Blue Wall combines high rainfall, warm microclimates, and rugged geography to produce remarkable and rare flora, hundreds of waterfalls, and the only two Wild & Scenic Rivers in the southeastern United States:  The Chattooga and Horsepasture Rivers.  This is a difficult place and this is a highly rewarding place.  This is, perhaps, my favorite place.

The Roan Highlands, part of the Unaka Mountains, are not a singular peak but a long, continuous, high-elevation ridgeline that forms the boundary lines for Western North Carolina and Eastern Tennessee. The Roan Highlands claim the longest continous stretch of grassy bald habitat in the world.  Southern Appalachian Grass Bald is critically imperiled.  The Roan also features, arguably, the finest stand of Southern Appalachian Spruce-Fir Forest in the Appalachian Range. Defenders of Wildlife ranked Southern Appalachian Spruce-Fir Forest the second most endangered habitat in the United States.  This place is special.  And it’s a visual delight for landscape photographers.

The Great Smoky Mountains are a place of water and growth:  beautiful mountain streams of cold, clear water, lush green mosses and thick forests.  A warm climate and ample rainfall combine with considerable elevational change to create incredibly rich landscapes.  Renowned for it’s biodiversity, the Smokies are the kind of place that reward attention with infinite detail.  The cove hardwood forests explode with wildflowers in the spring and the Appalachian Spruce-Fir Forests of the high peaks provide access to mystical cloud forests.  The Smokies are not a secret; they are the most visited National Park in America.  However, rich reward is just down the trail or along a mountain stream for those who wish to engage and to give of their attention!