Spring apple trees, Madison County, NC

As I travel to photograph the final photos in my new book “Blue Ridge”, I look for special images. This is the fun part! Although I’ve already chosen most of the photos for the project,  I’m still looking for those special “have to be in there” photos. This is one of them! As I was driving along, I noticed the beautiful blossoms of the apple trees on an old Appalachian farm. This scene really moved me.  These farms are disappearing at an alarming rate. The farmers are getting old and passing from this earth, and their families don’t seem to see the beauty in the land they’d owned for the past 100+ years. They sell the properties to developers and next thing you know, million-dollar vacation homes are built along the mountainside. This is a problem in the mountains of Western North Carolina, Northeast Tennessee and Southwestern Virginia. I’m not sure that we can do anything about it and I’m worried about our beautiful Southern Appalachian Mountains!

 

EOS 5D, EF70-200f/4L @ 84mm, f/11 @ 1/6sec