Photographing in the Great Smoky Mountains

(c) 2008 Patty Hankins

As I was doing some organizing in my office this morning, I came across my file of resources on photographing in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Bill and I have been to the Smoky Mountains three times in the past fifteen months, and have accumulated some useful reference material. We hope this list of resources will be helpful to anyone else who is planning a photography trip to the Smokies in the future.

For any trip to a national park, we always check out the park website – the site for the Great Smoky Mountain Park is full of information. At the park, you can pick up some free information published by the Park Service including the park brochure and the newspaper Smokies Guide.

You can also purchase The Great Somky Mountains Trail map by the National Park Service for $ 1.00. The trail map is a more detailed map of the park than in the park brochure. If you’re going to be doing any hiking, you need to get the trail map.

The Great Smoky Mountains issue (issue # 24) of Robert Hitchman’s Photograph America Newsletter provides a great overview of photographic opportunities in the park. His guides are one of the first resources I check for planning any trip. This one is 12 pages long – it would take weeks to explore all the places he highlights.

The Great Smoky Mountains Association is a non-profit organization authorized by Congress to support the park. They have a series of brochures and maps which supplement the information available from the Park Service. Most of the brochures cost about $ 1.00. Our favorites include

• Cades Cove Tour – has information about many of the buildings and people who lived in the Cades Cove area
• Roaring Fork Auto Tour – information about the sites and buildings along the tour
• Newfound Gap Road Auto Tour – highlights the views and sites along the main road in the park
• Noah ‘Bud’ Ogle Place – guide to the buildings and nature trail on the road to the Roaring Fork Auto Trail
• Wildflowers – a map highlighting which trails are best for seeing wildflowers in the park
• Waterfalls – a map with information and directions to many of the waterfalls in the park

Some books we’ve found especially useful include

• Bill Campbell and Nye Simmons’ The Smoky Mountains Photographer’s Guide is full of detailed information on exactly where the best vistas and views in the park are – and includes suggestions on when to photograph them. The sunrise photograph at the top of this post was taken from the Clingman’s Dome parking lot. This book is what tipped me off as to which part of the parking lot is the best place to photograph from.
• Peter White’s Wildflowers of the Smokies is a pocket sized book with tons of information about where to find and how to identify wildflowers in the park. The flowers in the book are organized by color, which makes it easier to identify what you are seeing when you have no clue what it is.
• Hal Hubbs, Charles Maynars & David Morris’s Waterfalls of the Smokies is a companion book to Wildflowers of the Smokies. It is another pocket sized book full of information about, photographs of and directions to the many waterfalls in the park.
• Robert & William Huston & Aaron Sharp’s Great Smoky Mountains Wildflowers – another great reference for identifying wildflowers. At the back are thumbnail photos organized by color and peak bloom time to help you identify the flowers.

We hope this list of resources will give you a place to start when you plan your next photography trip to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.