Diggles Photography

09/01/2026

Day 3 (part 5) in Great Smoky Mountains National Park – Middle Prong Trail:

We ended the day with a return visit to Middle Prong Trail. We had some extra time on the drive back to the hotel and decided to use it. The light by then was soft and even, and I was able to put together a composition along the Lynn Camp Prong that I'm genuinely happy with.

About this photo, "Middle Prong Trail – Lynn Camp Prong":
A wide view of the stream tumbling over moss-covered boulders, the backlit canopy filling the frame above.

Technical notes: Arca Swiss Pico View Camera + Hasselblad CFV 100C Digital Back + Rodenstock HR Digaron-W 40mm Lens, 3-frame vertical stitch

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08/25/2026

Day 3 (part 4) in Great Smoky Mountains National Park – A Note on Kara's Photography

At the Greenbrier waterfall, the difference in our approaches was on full display. While I was dialing in the wider composition of the full falls, Kara had worked through numerous images with varying compositions, using her tripod to capture the blurred motion of the water. One image in particular really jumped out at me — beautiful light, thoughtfully composed, and technically precise. The exposure time is exactly right for the water flow and light skimming across the moss, and the fallen log framing the falls above ties the whole frame together.

Kara shoots with a Nikon Z7 and a 24-200mm lens, a professional-level full frame kit chosen primarily for its versatility and portability. A medium format technical camera is not for everyone. The system is slower, heavier, and demands more fiddling with settings in the field. At smaller print sizes, 12x18 and below, the two systems produce results that are genuinely difficult to distinguish. The difference between the two systems is most apparent in larger prints, where medium format holds fine detail in ways that full frame cannot fully match at that scale.

Technical notes: Nikon Z7 + Nikkor Z 24-200mm

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08/18/2026

Day 3 (part 3) in Great Smoky Mountains National Park – Greenbrier:

We took a break from photography to stop in Gatlinburg for a mid-afternoon meal and a walk around. If we had any remaining doubt about the decision to stay in Townsend, Gatlinburg erased it. We were happy to leave.

By the time we reached the Greenbrier area later that afternoon, we had been up for over twelve hours. The 3:30am wake-up, the full morning at the overlooks, and the Gatlinburg stop had taken their toll. This is where the trip could have gone sideways.

Before leaving home, I had found an image by another photographer of a small, unnamed triple waterfall somewhere in the Greenbrier area. He described the location in vague terms, the kind of description that tells you roughly where to look without giving anything away directly. We spent part of our drive into Greenbrier watching for the landmarks he had mentioned. We drove past the spot on the way in without recognizing it. On the way out, something clicked. We had passed a small pullout about a mile back that matched the description. We turned around. It was the right place.

Standing in front of the falls, I'll be honest: I was tired, and at first glance the waterfall seemed smaller and less impressive than I had imagined. To make it worse I took a digger on the slippery rocks and nearly didn't even get the camera out. Kara had no such hesitation. She was already making images. Her enthusiasm was the push I needed. I set up the Arca Swiss Pico and started working the scene, and what followed produced one of my favorite images from the entire trip.

About this photo, "Unnamed Triple Waterfall":
A three-frame vertical stitch captures the full width of the falls, water splitting across moss-covered ledges, surrounded by rhododendron and lush spring growth.

Technical notes: Arca Swiss Pico View Camera + Hasselblad CFV 100C Digital Back + Rodenstock HR Digaron-W 70mm Lens, 3-frame vertical stitch

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08/11/2026

Day 3 (part 2) in Great Smoky Mountains National Park – Ben Morton Overlook, Newfound Gap, Greenbrier, Middle Prong Trail:

On the drive back down Newfound Gap Road, we noticed something that we couldn't see when we drove up in the dark: dogwood trees beginning to bloom. Higher up, the trees were bare. As we descended, the white flowers started appearing in greater numbers, sprinkling across the hillsides among trees still coming into their spring leaves. We kept our eyes open for the right place to stop.

When we found a good pullout, I spent time working the scene through several lighting conditions as the sun moved in and out of the clouds. The image I kept coming back to was made in soft, diffused light. The scene is complex, with dogwood blossoms and budding deciduous trees all competing for attention. Soft light holds it all together without contrast tearing it apart. A three-frame stitched file from the Arca Swiss Pico View Camera and Hasselblad CFV 100C Digital Back captures extraordinary levels of fine detail, something that becomes most apparent at print sizes of 20x24 and beyond, where the rendering of individual branches and blossoms holds in a way that smaller format systems cannot fully match at that scale.

Technical notes: Arca Swiss Pico View Camera + Hasselblad CFV 100C Digital Back + Rodenstock HR Digaron-W 70mm Lens, 3-frame vertical stitch

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08/05/2026

Day 3 (part 1) in Great Smoky Mountains National Park – Ben Morton Overlook, Newfound Gap, Greenbrier, Middle Prong Trail:

We were up at 3:30 in the morning to make it to the overlooks for sunrise. It was worth it.

Ben Morton Overlook gave us the classic Smoky Mountains scene: layered ridgelines receding into a warm dawn sky, the silhouettes of firs in the foreground. It's an iconic view for a reason.

We continued driving up to Newfound Gap. By the time we arrived, the sun had fully risen and another group of photographers was just wrapping up and leaving. The classic sunrise shot was behind us, but there was still a great deal to work with. I turned my attention to the trees surrounding the parking area. Behind me, raking sunlight was catching the bare upper branches of dormant trees in a way that made them glow against the shadowed forest behind. In front of me, the direct morning light hitting the freshly leafed canopy created an almost stippled quality, bright and abstract, quite different from my usual approach. I found myself drawn to it. These are not the images I expected to make at Newfound Gap, but they are among my favorites from the trip.

Technical notes: Arca Swiss Pico View Camera + Hasselblad CFV 100C Digital Back + Rodenstock HR Digaron-W 70mm Lens

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07/14/2026

Day 1 in Great Smoky Mountains National Park – Middle Prong Trail, Lynn Camp Prong:

We chose to stay in Townsend, on the quieter western side of the park. Everything we read pointed to it as a more peaceful base than Gatlinburg, and it placed us close to the areas we most wanted to explore. It turned out to be the right call. We arrived in the early evening and got settled quickly. There was still some daylight left, so we drove to the Middle Prong Trail trailhead. It wasn't much time, just enough for a short walk as the sun went down.

I've found that on photography trips, it's important to start making images as soon as you can. There's a warm-up process, much like any other skill. You have to shake off the travel and get your eye back. These two images from Lynn Camp Prong are exactly that: warm-up images.

The first is a detail of moss-covered rocks in the stream, photographed as the last of the evening light filtered through the trees. The second was made at dusk, after the sun had fully set. It was getting dark quickly, and the forest became a complex arrangement of trees and emerging leaves, the kind of scene that challenges both exposure and composition. Neither image is the strongest from the trip, but they served their purpose. By the time we left the trail, I felt like I was ready.

Technical notes: Arca Swiss Pico View Camera + Hasselblad CFV 100C Digital Back + Rodenstock HR Digaron-W 70mm Lens

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07/07/2026

Great Smoky Mountains National Park had been on my list for a while. My wife Kara and I finally made the trip in April. We put in a significant amount of research and planning beforehand, but went in equally open to being surprised. Preparation matters, but so does the willingness to set the itinerary aside when something unexpected presents itself.

Before the trip, we spent considerable time researching photography, travel, and local guide and hiking sites. That kind of research tends to surface the same popular locations over and over, which is useful, but not the whole picture. The more time you invest in searching, the more you start finding breadcrumbs: a vaguely described location in a photographer's notes, a comment buried in a hiking forum, a detail in the background of someone else's image. Those breadcrumbs led us to some of the best moments of the trip.

All of my images from this trip were made using a medium format technical camera system — the Arca Swiss Pico View Camera paired with the Hasselblad CFV 100C Digital Back and a selection of Rodenstock HR lenses. It is a deliberate, tripod-based system that encourages careful looking before committing to a composition, which typically means fewer but more considered images per location. Kara's approach is quite different. She prefers to move, covering more ground and working handheld when possible so she can be more spontaneous, building a broader set of images from each stop.

Stay tuned for more from my latest blog post, "Technical Camera Landscape Photography in Great Smoky Mountains National Park", or read the full article on my website: https://buff.ly/BWffclF

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Technical camera landscape photography in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Four days of locations, fieldcraft, and medium format image-making in the Smokies.

06/30/2026

This image, "The Castle at Twilight", features layered elements that build from foreground to background with desert grasses providing a textural foundation, leading to a row of autumn cottonwood trees in the middle ground. The trees are deliberately positioned to be framed entirely by the landscape, avoiding any overlap with the clear blue sky above.

At the highest point of the composition, Castle formation sits against the deepening blue sky. The diffused light conditions of twilight reveal subtle luminosity throughout the scene - from the gentle glow in the desert grasses to the delicate highlighting of the rock formations.

Available on our print shop: https://buff.ly/OSjPszs

📍 Capitol Reef National Park
Technical notes: Fujifilm GFX 100 II, GF32-64mm @42.5mm

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06/23/2026

Lake Helene, tucked beneath Flattop Mountain in Rocky Mountain National Park, offers a striking example of Colorado’s alpine beauty. Bring some of the national park into your home or commercial space with print options available on our website: https://buff.ly/hcRvWpA

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06/09/2026

Part 7 of my Medium Format Magazine article - Investing in Your Evolution as an Architectural Photographer

Closing
"The workshops and mentoring sessions each revealed critical aspects of architectural photography. These learning investments have compounded over time into better client work, stronger personal projects, and a more confident professional approach.

The investment never stops. Each workshop, each self-assigned project, and each client commission builds on the last. Photography, like architecture itself, is a practice that never reaches completion. Architects continuously refine their craft; it feels natural that I should do the same."

Colorado School of Mines - Golden, Colorado
Image 1 made with FUJIFILM GFX100II
Image 2 made with Hasselblad CFV 100C

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