State

Where Wo Watch Whe Leaves Warn photographers offer their ideas on the best places to spot fall foliage this season. Text by Scott Smith Photos by Norman Poole and Kevin Adams To be a professional photographer in North Carolina is to spend the autumn in search of that perfect fall color shot in the Tar I leel mountains. You might say this time of the year is like a photographer's Super Bowl, when the truly great ones are separated from pretenders. So essential is acquiring good fall color lor various magazines, postcards and calendars, photographers know their year can either Ik* made or broken by what they come up with dur¬ ing fall months traveling the Blue Ridge- Parkway and other mountain roads. Two such people arc Norman Poole and Kevin Adams. You prolxibly recall the names. They appear frequently at the bottom of many of the photographs in this magazine. That’s no accident, because Poole and Adams happen to be two of the In-st in the business. So. when The Slate decided to do a Story on the best places to watch fall color in the Tar Heel State from a pho¬ tographer's point of view, we looked no further than these two respected profes¬ sionals. Poole. 62. has l>een selling his work to magazines, calendars and postcards for the past 20 years out of his studio in Gastonia. Chances are if you pick up a calendar featuring fall color from the mountains, many of the photographs will belong to Poole, who has become quite an authority on the subject during his career. When heading out to shoot fall color, Poole always logins along the back roads of Avery and Watauga counties. ■Recently the s title designated many of these roads as scenic byways, but I've been shooting them for years," Poole says. “Here you find the kinds of things that just aren't easy to come by other places, such as nice old bams and people shucking com. There’s a real nostalgic look about the place. A lot of good pho¬ tographs have been lost in (Watauga and Avery counties) because of development, but you still find some nice things along those back roads." Poole points to the Chimney Rock- I-ake I. lire area in west Rutherford County as being one of the few places that combines great fall color with beau- tifully exposed mountain streams. He also points to the Houghton Park area near Spaita as one of the state’s most underrated places to view fall color. “I've seen all of the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina, and the pret¬ tiest part to me is the Doughton Park area from (N.C.) Highway 18 south." Poole says. “There's just beautiful rolling country around Houghton Park. You'll find lots of split-rail fences and farm scenes with plenty of bams and silos. It’s hard to find good scenes like that." Adams, a youthful 34. has only been shooting seriously for about six years. His talent, however, has been quickly recog¬ nized. Mis work has been published in several regional magazines, but it was his highly successful book. North Catalina Waterfalls, released last year, that put the 1 ligh Point resident on the photography map. Two more books arc in the offing — one on North Carolina wildflowers for next spring and another on the state’s lighthouses for the spring of 1997. Where are Adams’ favorite fall color venues? "A place I really like is on the Blue Ridge Parkway, between U.S. 276 South and N.C. 215." he says. "At that point, the Parkway crosses near the boundary of the Shining Rock Wilderness Area. This is where you’ll find the Graveyard Fields. If I had to pick one spot where I wanted to lx- for fall color, this would be it. It’s a high elevation, about 5,000 feet, so for the peak of fall color you need to get there two weeks before the normal peak. You need to lx- there by the first week in October." From Graveyard Fields, Adams sug¬ gests taking N.C. 215 north toward Wayne-svillc to view his second-favorite spot: the gorge of the west fork of the Pigeon River. Adams also calls Whitewater Falls, located on the Jackson-Transylvania County line near South Carolina, "one of the best fall scenes in the mountains. There’s an open gorge area with decidu¬ ous trees. There's one little maple tree sitting right beside the waterfall, and when the color is just right, that’s some¬ thing to see." Both Poole and Adanis say the tradi¬ tional western North Carolina scenic des¬ tinations aren't quite the draw they used to Ik-. They say people arc looking for something different. “Those- places are so crowded and so photographed." Adams says. “The places I'm telling you about are just as go«xl if not belter.” The Stulc/Scptembcr 1995 22