Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Callen Harty

@callenh.bsky.social

Acanthocephala terminalis. #AcanthocephalaTerminalis #Leaf-FootedBug #Bug #Insect #Animal #Nature #Photography #GreatSmokyMountainsNationalPark #Elkmont #Tennessee

Acanthocephala terminalis is a type of leaf-footed bug. It is facing left on a diagonal in the photo and is on a rock that appears to have some moss on it. Its head and thorax are black. The antenna are long and form a V. They are black about two-thirds of the way and then a bright orange toward the end. The wings are open and reveal a dark body with a light blue stripe toward the tail end. The legs look like a cricket's legs and appear to be brown in this photo.

November 12, 2025 at 12:04 PM

Sussman Imaging

@sussmanimaging.bsky.social

A beautiful fall morning for a bike ride down Hyatt Lane in Cades Cove.

#sussmanimaging #sonya6700 #CadesCove #HyattLane #GreatSmokyMountains #GreatSmokyMountainsNationalPark #GSMNP #Smokies #tennessee #landscape #landscapephotography #mountains #fall #autumn #fallcolors #bike #bicycle #cyclist

November 7, 2025 at 12:29 PM

Tom Ogburn 🪔

@bardicarts.bsky.social

#Stunday #Landscapes #Photography #Appalachians #BlueRidgeParkway #SkylineDriveParkway #NPS #USFS #GreatSmokyMountainsNationalPark #mobilephotography #smartphonephotography #shotoniphone #AshevilleNC
#TheParkwaysProjects #BlueRidgeMountains #BooneNC
#KnoxvilleTN #TenneseeFoothillsTrail #GatlinburgTN

The Parkways Projects 1934≈2025 @parkwaysprojects.bsky.social · Jan 28

"Covered Footbridge," 1938. #EastCoastKin #Duotone
Photo Restoration, from NPS/OPN archives #blackandwhite
#MonochromeMonday #monochromephotography #SkyArt #photography #blackandwhitephotography #monotone
#Bridges #BlueRidgeParkway #SkylineDriveParkway
#BlueSkyPhotography #NationalParks

Photo restoration of an old 1938 photo of a small covered foot bridge across a branch in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Sepia toned look. Hand-split shingles on the top lean-to roof. The planks below are actually split slate stone.

“The Parkways Project” began as an idea to tell a family story which was always occurred between two to three weeks per year, belonging to a family from Kershaw, a small town in South Carolina between the years of 1966 to 1972. The key years were the camping vacations, from 1968 to 1971, until a small business was opened in that same small town.

But in 2019, 50 years since 1969 (the year the hippies populated our vacations—again, inaugurating changes for one of us) I had gone into ghost picnic grounds, where spirits lived amid a new and thickly rooted understory. One by one, like dominos the size of dolmens, falling without a sound on thickly matted forest floors of fir needles, another strange but wonderful revelation emerged, for the forests themselves had altered. Eerily beautiful portions of memories had become each a wavering mirage of a bridge to Brigadoon in the mists shrouding the tree trunks and retreating grassy arenas.

"The Smokies have averaged nearly 12 million visits per year over the past decade. The highest record was set in 2021 when over 14 million visitors headed to the park in search of outdoor activities amid the COVID pandemic." ≈ Knoxville News Sentinel, Feb 27, 2024

February 17, 2025 at 5:27 AM

NanNan🦋 🇺🇦❤️🇵🇸 🏳️‍🌈 👵

@nan-nanlovesme.bsky.social

www.wbir.com/article/news...

Two protests were held in #Knoxville against #DOGE and #Tesla. Another was held in the #GreatSmokyMountainsNationalPark.

Protests against DOGE pop up across East Tennessee following federal employee layoffs

Two protests were held in Knoxville against DOGE and Tesla. Another was held in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

www.wbir.com

March 23, 2025 at 2:35 AM

Callen Harty

@callenh.bsky.social

Red-cheeked salamander. This only lives at high altitudes within the Great Smokies. #Red-CheekedSalamander #Jordan'sSalamander #Jordan'sRedCheekSalamander #AppalachianWoodlandSalamander #Salamander #Amphibian #Animal #Nature #Photgrapher #Kuwohi #GreatSmokyMountainsNationalPark #NorthCarolina

Red-cheeked salamander on the ground. It is a long black salamander with a red cheek on each side of the body behind its eyes. This one is looking right, with its head slightly raised and its front legs seem to be tucked in a bit. Its tail, which tapes off from the body, is curled around to just in front of its back leg.

March 10, 2025 at 12:13 PM

Tom Ogburn 🪔

@bardicarts.bsky.social

#Stunday #Landscapes #Photography #Appalachians #BlueRidgeParkway #SkylineDriveParkway #NPS #USFS #GreatSmokyMountainsNationalPark #mobilephotography #smartphonephotography #shotoniphone #AshevilleNC
#TheParkwaysProjects #BlueRidgeMountains #BooneNC
#KnoxvilleTN #TenneseeFoothillsTrail #GatlinburgTN

The Parkways Projects 1934≈2025 @parkwaysprojects.bsky.social · Feb 10

“Oklahoma 66 poured” #TomOgburn #Photography
#Stunday 🦋 #EastCoastKin #Landscape #DigitalPhoto
#BlueskyPhotography #Skyart #BlueskyArt #DigitalArt #Route66 #TheMotherRoad #Oklahoma #RoadTrip

An old section of about nine miles of the original Route 66 roadbed in the western third of Oklahoma has already baked dry after a sudden heavy downpour. Across America, you can ride along a few miles at a time. It's rather like hopscotch in a vehicle, and becomes tiring fast.

Best to plan your route to Williams, Arizona and then take a turn northwest to embark on the longest continual section of the Mother Road, all the way to California. It's an incredible ride. 158 miles of such.

February 17, 2025 at 5:17 AM

Tom Ogburn 🪔

@bardicarts.bsky.social

#Stunday #Landscapes #Photography #Appalachians #BlueRidgeParkway #SkylineDriveParkway #NPS #USFS #GreatSmokyMountainsNationalPark #mobilephotography #smartphonephotography #shotoniphone #AshevilleNC
#TheParkwaysProjects #BlueRidgeMountains #BooneNC
#KnoxvilleTN #TenneseeFoothillsTrail #GatlinburgTN

The Parkways Projects 1934≈2025 @parkwaysprojects.bsky.social · Feb 16

“Entropic Alley to Rutledge” #TomOgburn #Photography
#Stunday 🦋 #Landscapes #BlueskyPhotography
#Skyart #BlueskyArt #Art #CharlestonSC #RutledgeStreet
#StateParks #ColonialLake #CharlestonAlleys #Beaufain
#Nature #TheParkwaysProjects #SouthCarolina

My name for my alleyway from where I parked off Beaufain to get to Rutledge Avenue (were I heading that way) was "Entropic Alley." It IS a Charleston micro alley, about 30 yards long. But it hadn't been given a name until I came along. I have a penchant for naming things which need a name. Like titling artworks. Usually bathed in sunlight, as you can tell from the brilliance of the background at Noon. Rutledge and the buildings on the other side of the avenue are completely washed out.

These palmetto fronds are the old, long and narrow kind. Sharp and slightly serrated and often twisting in the current of wind that would at times whip into and out of this alley. What I never learned, was why there was old red tile hollow conduit that often carried water within it, and here, where it was broken away on the outer face, one could see that water was running in it. These terra cotta tiles were almost a foot tall and five inches wide. My guess is that this was a feature for watering the garden that was on the other side of this wall. Which makes perfect sense to me, as the Romans and the Spanish did such things long before Charleston was ever on a map.

This will become one of the "America: Lost & Found" works soon. It's just craving that entry into it's new arena of being.

February 17, 2025 at 5:14 AM

Tom Ogburn 🪔

@bardicarts.bsky.social

#Stunday #Landscapes #Photography #Appalachians #BlueRidgeParkway #SkylineDriveParkway #NPS #USFS #GreatSmokyMountainsNationalPark #mobilephotography #smartphonephotography #shotoniphone #AshevilleNC
#TheParkwaysProjects #BlueRidgeMountains #BooneNC
#KnoxvilleTN #TenneseeFoothillsTrail #GatlinburgTN

The Parkways Projects 1934≈2025 @parkwaysprojects.bsky.social · Feb 8

“Four Holes off Five Chops” #TomOgburn #digitalphoto
#EastCoastKin🦋#BlueSkyArtShow Theme is #Reflections
#landscape #photography #art #photograph #digital
#landscapephotography #photographersofbluesky
#blueskyphotography #skyart #blueskyart #digitalart

"After seeing nothing but swamp, more swamps, and then some swamps the entire time I've been down here along Edisto and Santee Cooper way, the sheer miasma of them has taken hold. The cool thing is—now I know where they all are, and where some of the most beautiful lay hidden." ≈ me, as an opening to a blog in January 2019

A lowcountry swamp like this one is often driven past so quickly people have stopped seeing them. They are Nature's victims of ghosting; they're canceled. I decided in 2018 I would start eyeballing them as I drove by, then, next step: find a road into them. This is harder to do in the South than one might imagine. Cables with locks, chains with locks, elaborate steel swinging gates with locks. Locks with locks.

But I found ways.

Here you have a trio of trees forming the closest middle ground. Behind them, another small patch of land above standing blackwater to facilitate three more larger trees. Then you reach the marsh grass behind these primary actor trees. It may look solid from here; it is not so. This photo was made in March. Some of the smaller understory trees have already produced new leaves, but many are an anemic pale yellow. The larger trees haven't quite begun to sprout leaves but many had buds visible from below. The blackwater is reflecting a deep rich cobalt version of the sky above which is just your random azure blue that you may see on any given day. The swamp grass is also just turning into a pale green, some patches on the right, in better sun, already beginning to darken into their summer emerald green form.

February 17, 2025 at 5:20 AM

conhartke.bsky.social

@conhartke.bsky.social

The Milky Way over Cove Mountain in the #GreatSmokyMountainsNationalPark, 8/24/2024

November 18, 2024 at 7:01 PM

Lisa M Green

@lisamgreenphotos.bsky.social

Another beautiful shot from cades cove in the smoky mountains!
#landscapephotographer
#milkywayphotographer
#greatsmokymountainsnationalpark

December 18, 2024 at 6:20 PM

Tom Ogburn 🪔

@bardicarts.bsky.social

#Stunday #Landscapes #Photography #Appalachians #BlueRidgeParkway #SkylineDriveParkway #NPS #USFS #GreatSmokyMountainsNationalPark #mobilephotography #smartphonephotography #shotoniphone #AshevilleNC
#TheParkwaysProjects #BlueRidgeMountains #BooneNC
#KnoxvilleTN #TenneseeFoothillsTrail #GatlinburgTN

The Parkways Projects 1934≈2025 @parkwaysprojects.bsky.social · Feb 11

“17 Chalmers Street ” #TomOgburn #photography #charlestonsc #pinkhousetavern #building #art
#EastCoastKin #landscapes #digitalphoto #pirates
#blueskyphotography #skyart #blueskyart #digitalart

Sep 1996, trying out a new Canon A5 digital camera.

An odd view from the back side of the Pink Tavern on Chalmers allows for a good view of the encrusted black clay tiles (originally red clay tiles) and one of the back dormer windows. A soft but rich blue sky frames the pink surface of the home, the tiles in perspective to one's point of view, looking up from the back yard.

On my return from New Orleans in August 1996, with a new $1600 Canon A5 Digital Camera in hand, I wandered around Charleston for a weekend. One of the very first shots I made to try out the little camera's chops on real subject matter was this photo. There were three actually, one being a shot of the front of the Pink House Tavern, as it was called back then (and still is) one from an oblique end angle and this one from the back. Over the years I began to appreciate this view more, and included it in the very first exhibit of images made with the A5 from all over the American Southeast and Southwest.

WhileI have never had the honor to meet Madame Mesny/Mincey, there is always tomorrow.

"The tiled gambrel roof dates to the eighteenth century. The building was a tavern in the 1710s and onward, owned by renowned Madame and distiller Madame Mincey, a French Huguenot. James Gordon was the owner of the house by the 1780s. The artist Alice R. Huger Smith used the house as a studio in the early twentieth century." ≈ Wikipedia

February 17, 2025 at 5:16 AM

Lisa Calandrino

@pabitelphotography.bsky.social

Also also, I have two new #Etsy listings for fans of #GreatSmokyMountainsNationalPark! 10% of profits will go directly to Friends of the Smokies. Excuse the black border on the sample photo; it isn't there irl. 😬

pabitelphotography.etsy.com/listing/1866...

#alumcavetrail #tennessee #mtleconte

Alum Cave Trail Photo Print W/ Text | Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee | Mount Leconte | Travel Photography | Gifts for Hikers - Etsy

This Color Photography item is sold by PabitelPhotography. Ships from Grand Rapids, MI. Listed on Feb 26, 2025

pabitelphotography.etsy.com

February 27, 2025 at 5:22 PM

Tom Ogburn 🪔

@bardicarts.bsky.social

#Stunday #Landscapes #Photography #Appalachians #BlueRidgeParkway #SkylineDriveParkway #NPS #USFS #GreatSmokyMountainsNationalPark #mobilephotography #smartphonephotography #shotoniphone #AshevilleNC
#TheParkwaysProjects #BlueRidgeMountains #BooneNC
#KnoxvilleTN #TenneseeFoothillsTrail #GatlinburgTN

The Parkways Projects 1934≈2025 @parkwaysprojects.bsky.social · Feb 5

“Palmetto, Moss & Snow,” #digitalphoto #TomOgburn #photography #landscapephotography #nature #winter
#blueskyphotography #blueskyart #skyart #snow
#EastCoastKin 🦋 #PhotographersUnited

A rare snowfall in the South Carolina lowcountry. A white field of soft snow about three inches deep carries the shadows of the early morning Sun all the way down to the shore of Lake Marion. The sky is a pale bluish white, the lake's water a medium slate blue. The small pine in the distance looks a dark green; the palmetto fronds an olive to chromium oxide green.

"A very cold and humid wintry morning, around 8:50am here, as the winter sun was casting its long shadows about the snow edging Lake Marion." ≈ from my notes

February 17, 2025 at 5:23 AM

Jace Bowden

@jacebowden.bsky.social

Ramsay Cascades Trail at Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee. This trail is through an old growth forest, has some of the largest trees in the park, and the tallest waterfall in park! One of my personal favorites
#greatsmokymountainsnationalpark #nationalpark #tennessee #ramsaycascades

February 23, 2025 at 1:56 AM

NPS Cambot

@nps-cambot.bsky.social

Look Rock Webcam, Great Smoky Mountains National Park

#NPS #NationalParkService #GreatSmokyMountainsNationalPark #GreatSmokyMountains

Rolling mountain view with tree-covered foothills. Puffy clouds in the blue sky.

May 4, 2025 at 3:25 AM

Tom Ogburn 🪔

@bardicarts.bsky.social

#Stunday #Landscapes #Photography #Appalachians #BlueRidgeParkway #SkylineDriveParkway #NPS #USFS #GreatSmokyMountainsNationalPark #mobilephotography #smartphonephotography #shotoniphone #AshevilleNC
#TheParkwaysProjects #BlueRidgeMountains #BooneNC
#KnoxvilleTN #TenneseeFoothillsTrail #GatlinburgTN

The Parkways Projects 1934≈2025 @parkwaysprojects.bsky.social · Feb 9

“Rocky Knob Agos” #TomOgburn #digitalphoto #art #skyart
#EastCoastKin 🦋 #landscape #photography#photograph
#landscapephotography #photographersofbluesky
#blueskyphotography #blueskyart #blueridgeparkway

Rocky Knob Picnic Grounds about to become enshrouded by fog, as most haunted places are in Time.

There are ghosts, and then, ghosts within us, and they are the embers near where we whisper their names, and they curl up beside us in our sleep, and calm our anxieties, and coo to our dreams. The tables, the fountains—they are still there, but vacant of people for they no longer exist.

They bend away from us now.

February 17, 2025 at 5:19 AM

Carol R Montoya

@photogirl60.bsky.social

Mouse Creek Falls During Winter II

fineartamerica.com/featured/mou...

#MouseCreekFalls #Waterfall #GreatSmokyMountainsNationalPark #waterfallphotography #waterfalls #winter
#northcarolina #naurephotograph #Nature #trail #Outdoors

Mouse Creek Falls During Winter II by Carol Montoya

Mouse Creek Falls During Winter II Photograph by Carol Montoya

fineartamerica.com

February 23, 2025 at 1:50 AM

Tom Ogburn 🪔

@bardicarts.bsky.social

#Stunday #Landscapes #Photography #Appalachians #BlueRidgeParkway #SkylineDriveParkway #NPS #USFS #GreatSmokyMountainsNationalPark #mobilephotography #smartphonephotography #shotoniphone #AshevilleNC
#TheParkwaysProjects #BlueRidgeMountains #BooneNC
#KnoxvilleTN #TenneseeFoothillsTrail #GatlinburgTN

The Parkways Projects 1934≈2025 @parkwaysprojects.bsky.social · Feb 7

"California duotone," #TomOgburn #digitalphoto #nature
#scape 🦋 #EastCoastKin #landscape #photography
#blueskyphotography #photographersofbluesky #art
#landscapephotography #skyart #blueskyart #photograph

"Silence is not acoustic. It is a change of mind, a turning around." ≈ John Cage

This image was made in December 2013. I have no idea where I was (except somewhere between Joshua Tree and Death Valley) but I was traveling with a dear friend who was trying to lure me into Siri. I was, erm, hesitant. We saw what was coming at us, and were speeding towards it as fast as it was speeding towards us.

This photo was made before we realized what was ahead of us. What you see in the distance is the approaching dust storm over a mile high. We didn't know that in this moment. We kept talking about the rainbow that was forming, but there was no rain. Only dust in a mighty wind. When we collided with it, we were only five minutes from a deluge of rain, hence the "dustbow" being born behind the dust storm into a rainbow, after all. She and I laughed aloud as the rains drenched the Jeep.

Notes from a few days later:

“Shifting gears from the grid back to soil and air, traveling more than twisting pixels, and collecting sequences of shots within a pretty basic Canon for later builds.” By the end of 2013 I was AWOL from the keyboard, finding myself in the outback through to early 2016, then going back to ground. Back to Earth from Ether. In a manner of speaking.

“It's been a quiet half-decade in the Four Corners, a quiet search and rescue, in a tech quiescence; a way to a view. A way to locate self.” ≈ from more notes

“Every human being is a raindrop. And when enough of the raindrops become clear and coherent they then become the power of the storm.” ≈ John Trudell

February 17, 2025 at 5:22 AM

Tom Ogburn 🪔

@bardicarts.bsky.social

#Stunday #Landscapes #Photography #Appalachians #BlueRidgeParkway #SkylineDriveParkway #NPS #USFS #GreatSmokyMountainsNationalPark #mobilephotography #smartphonephotography #shotoniphone #AshevilleNC
#TheParkwaysProjects #BlueRidgeMountains #BooneNC
#KnoxvilleTN #TenneseeFoothillsTrail #GatlinburgTN

February 17, 2025 at 5:13 AM

Chumpy's Sketchbook

@chumpyssketchbook.bsky.social

Inktober National Park Project - day 9: #greatsmokymountainsnationalpark
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#art #inktober #ink #inkart #inkdrawing #drawing #draw #artist #nationalpark #nationalparks #rainbowfalls #greatsmokymountains @nationalparkservice @greatsmokynps #protectourparks

October 9, 2025 at 4:30 PM

Tom Ogburn 🪔

@bardicarts.bsky.social

The Parkways Projects—A multi-tiered photo essay to come in 3 arenas—a Substack/Patreon/Bluesky trio. To Follow, please click the post below & thank you for doing so 💙🦋
#EastCoastKin #Landscapes #Photography #Tennessee #BlueRidgeParkway #GreatSmokyMountainsNationalPark
#CivilianConservationCorps