Author: craigburkhalter

After having an urban studio for decades I still am amazed every time I look out my window. My preferred hiking time is early in the morning, often just as the sun is rising but throughout the day it is an ever changing scene. I see bears, deer, coyotes and unfortunately armadillos. The young buck…

Blue is my hiking mate. We have plenty of trails on the property so I try not to take her “off campus”. She is uncanny though, I sometimes sneak off without her and I’ll be waaaay back in the woods, off trail and she will come bounding up. She might run 15 – 20 miles…

Most of these new prints have a textural quality that doesn’t show up well in photographs. To achieve this I slop a thick layer of acrylic medium on the print and do an ink wash over that after it dries. For Sorrow, For Mirth and For a Wedding are taken from the children’s counting crows…

Last night I was able to see Old Crow Medicine Show at the Great Smoky Mountain Center. They have progressed A LOT since I first saw them at the Hummingbird bar in Macon about 100 years ago. They were just a high energy, 5-piece bluegrass band at the time. They were good then but now…

I start every day with a hike, often as the sun is rising and on occasion hike to the top of Picken’s Nose, a nearby mountain before dawn to watch the sun rise (see earlier posts). The ever-changing mist and the clouds in the morning are fascinating to me. I have documented the fog down…

My Sunday morning hike was into the bog at the bottom of the mountain. I’ve heard there is another one further up the mountain but I haven’t seen it. It is a really neat-o area that I hike through and around regularly. Once going through it I got stuck, fell three times and filled my…

Morning is my favorite time to hike. The clouds moving through the mountains create an ever- changing scenery. See a neat-o shot? Better take it right then or it will change in a matter of seconds. To watch the sun come up and burn the mist away is exciting to me. I can start out…

I put seeds out for the birds every morning and one of my mountain joys is watching the birds. I live on the edge of a national forest and have a big field in front of the house so it is the perfect setting for many species from hawks and owls to Gold Finches. During…

I take a pretty convoluted route going back and forth to Macon. Driving this way through Hillsborough I have passed an abandoned gas station / store for years. A few days ago I finally stopped and photographed it. I don’t know how long it has been closed but looking at the price of the gas…

A while back I stumbled onto what I thought was a double secret hidden swimming hole. As I was scrambling down the bank I found a rope someone had tied to a tree to help climb down. Someone had been there already. So I downgraded it to just secret. There is a 4-foot slanted waterfall…