649 - Dragon’s Tooth
Today we went on a quest to find the Dragon’s Tooth.
AKA… the name of a rock that protrudes out of the Blue Ridge Mountain range like the remains of some long forgotten beast.
Fog had enveloped the entire region, making our hike to the rock feel like something out of a surreal dream. I had to pinch myself a few times to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating.
I spent so much of my early 20s doing acid that these flashbacks can hit hard.
Our original plan was to do the McAfee Knob, which is probably the most well-known hike in Virginia. But after asking a few hikers if there was any visibility at the top, we decided to change our plans. A nine mile hike to see absolutely nothing just wasn’t in the cards.
What was in the cards however, was this hike. A 4.5 mile adventure only right down the road that featured old, misty rock formations.
It began as a simple rainy day hike, but as we got higher and higher up the mountain, the fog got so thick you could barely see 50 feet in front of you.
The path was stricken with rocky staircases, to the point where it felt like we destined to meet an ancient kung-fu master at the top:
At this point, I decided to bust out my new extension tubes. Also known as the poor man’s macro, these tubes are positioned in-between your lens and the camera body. This allows you to focus your lens closer to the object you’re shooting, which makes it appear bigger in frame.
For approximately $30 they add about 1.5x magnification to ANY lens in the ~50-135mm range, which is pretty solid when you consider that most macro lenses have about 2x magnification, a fixed focal length, and cost $600+.
Not to mention the fact that these extension tubes weigh just over 4oz and are less than 2 inches big, making them an easy add-on to your adventure setup that doesn’t involve bringing a whole separate lens.
My first official shot had to be of a spiderweb. Shoutout my old pet tarantula, Roobios:
“Bubbles”
Taken with Sony a7rIII + Sony 24-105mm f/4 G + Extension Tubes
[ISO 3200 ~ 105mm ~ f/4 ~ 1/800s]
We kept moving to the top, where I found this composition that looked like it should be a dragon’s egg:
We were getting closer to the beast. I enjoyed the red lines in that shot, which made the egg feel like it was radiating some sort of magic power. I swear I wasn’t on drugs.
And then finally, we arrived at the top. Here was my official shot of the Dragon’s Tooth, shrouded in fog:
It was surprisingly difficult to get a photo of, because this was the only angle that wasn’t blocked by some sort of tree branch. The ground in front of it was also completely bare, leaving no room for nifty foreground elements.
But it is what it is. Perhaps this is what makes the rock feel so powerful.
I also found this root creeping out of some stone, which looked like some sort of dragon’s claw:
I’m going for the complete setup here, folks.
You can also sort of see the Dragon’s Tooth in the background, which gives you an idea of how dense the fog was.
Overall, this was a fantastic freaking hike. Fog has got to be one of my favorite landscape photography elements, and an unexpected trait of the east coast that’s really been pulling through lately.
Now it was time to find a dragon sized meal.
