Yesterday’s NC Miscellany post alerted me to the upcoming 75th anniversary (1934-2009) of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. They’ve set up an interactive website to help celebrate. I was going to upload a Hugh Morton photo to their nifty “Family Album“—until I read their Photo Release agreement, that is. (Somehow I don’t think the library would appreciate my agreeing to those terms!).

So, I’m offering an independent, A View to Hugh tribute to the GSMNP. A cropped version of the following photo appeared on the cover of the October 1, 1968 issue of The State magazine, referencing an article by Jane Corey called “Hugh Morton’s Favorite Ten.” Included below is the text that accompanied the photo in The State.

Among Hugh Morton’s 10 favorite photos—of the thousands he has made—is this shot of a mother bear and three cubs walking across a road in the Great Smokies. It is a once-in-a-lifetime picture, says Hugh, because any time bears show up on a highway, a crowd quickly forms. “I know I will never again have the chance at a shot like this without people showing.”

Just a quick post to acknowledge that today (May 16) is Endangered Species Day, “an opportunity for people young and old to learn about the importance of protecting endangered species and everyday actions that we can take to help protect our nation’s disappearing wildlife and last remaining open space,” according to the Endangered Species Coalition.

As we saw in the previous post about Venus flytraps, Hugh Morton was concerned about the preservation of native and rare species, especially later in his life. His greatest impact in this area was on Grandfather Mountain—Morton donated and sold thousands of acres to The Nature Conservancy, establishing a permanent, protected habitat for endangered plants and animals. (In 1992, the mountain was recognized as an International Biosphere Reserve).

Grandfather is home to several imperiled and rare species, including types of spiders, turtles, salamanders, flying squirrels, peregrine falcons, Heller’s Blazing Star (a vascular plant), and Azalea Vaseyi (pictured above—according to Sherpa Guides, Grandfather has the largest population of Vaseyi in the world).

This negative was in an envelope labeled “Rare Bats, Spring 1984.” These critters could be Virginia big-eared bats, an endangered species found only on Grandfather Mountain and in one other location, the Cranberry Iron Mine. They could also be Northern Long-eared Bats or Eastern Small-footed Bats, which are both on the list as well. (I’m unable to tell from this image whether these bats have ears that are unusually big and/or long, or if their feet are exceptionally small, but at any rate, I’m glad they have a home on Grandfather).

As I’ve been sorting through Hugh Morton’s negatives over the past few months, it’s been fun to keep an eye out for different technical aspects of his work—how he would occasionally experiment with various film types and lenses, lighting, focus, depth of field, etc. One trend I have noticed is his fondness for time exposures, or the use of longer exposure times (leaving the shutter open for multiple seconds, minutes, or maybe even hours) to convey motion in the images he created.

You’ll often see this technique used in photos of waterfalls, where a longer exposure gives the water a silky, almost foggy look. This isn’t the greatest example, but take it from me—Morton experimented heavily with waterfall photography. (Anyone know where this was taken?)

One of Morton’s best known time exposures is on page 41 of the 2003 book Hugh Morton’s North Carolina—the one where Morton got a security guard to drive his car up and down the road to Grandfather Mountain while he held the shutter open. (I would have included that image in this post, but I’m thus far I haven’t found the original!). NOTE: See update at end of post.

I love the image below, which I presume was taken at one of the ski slopes in the Boone area. (Anyone know which one? While I did grow up in Boone, I was not physically coordinated enough for skiing. Also, my mother worked for a while in the local emergency room, so I knew the possible consequences). The light trails create a wonderful and somewhat creepy effect in combination with the “ghostly” skiers at the bottom.

Here’s another striking example from Morton’s younger days—this one’s labeled “Rides, Carolina Beach,” and was taken sometime in the 1940s.

Finally, here’s an example of a time exposure gone wrong (or right, depending on your perspective—I think it looks cool). Believe it or not, this is a nighttime image of UNC’s Old Well, taken sometime around 1940. Perhaps he hadn’t yet invested in a tripod?

UPDATE 5/20/2008: Stephen’s been messing around with the new scanner, and I just happened to notice that he had done a test scan of one of Morton’s time exposure slides of the road up to Grandfather Mountain. Here it is:

Philosopher William James visited Grandfather Mountain in 1891, calling the town of Linville “the most peculiar, and one of the most poetic places I have ever been in” (see The Letters of William James for James’ complete thoughts on his visit). Of the mountain he wrote, “The road, the forest, the view, the crags, were as good as such things can be….Later, doubtless, a railroad, stores, and general sordidness with wealth will creep in. Meanwhile let us enjoy things!”

Well, I’m happy to report that in the century or so since then, relatively little sordidness has been allowed to encroach. I visited Grandfather this past weekend with my family, where we were lucky enough to meet the Morton family and get a personalized, behind-the-scenes tour of the facilities and surroundings from Hugh’s grandson Crae, the current President. Growing up in Boone, obviously I had been there before—but it’s been years, and I’ve become far more accustomed to looking at the mountain in two dimensions only (at work). It’s far more impressive in three. (Especially impressive, but not recommended, is crossing the Mile High Swinging Bridge in winds gusting to 95 mph. “We’re about to close the bridge due to safety concerns,” they said . . .”but you can go across first.” Big mistake.)

There’s no question that Hugh Morton developed an amazing ability to photograph the mountain and its surroundings to their fullest advantage. Crae drove me around to several of Hugh’s best photographing spots, including his favorite tree in MacRae Meadows, the point from which you can sometimes catch a glimpse of the Charlotte skyline, and the rock from which he took those gorgeous shots of the Parkway. To illustrate my point, here’s a photo I took from the Viaduct rock:

And, here’s one of Morton’s photos of the Viaduct, which I borrowed from Go Blue Ridge Card blog (I’m sure it’s around here somewhere . . .):

Obviously, it helps to go at certain times of the year. But it also helps to be patient and persistent, as Hugh was (photographing from the same spots over and over again, waiting for lighting and cloud placement to be exactly right). And, Crae let me in on another secret—sometimes Hugh would recruit (or coerce) a volunteer to position the foliage just so, to achieve maximum framing effect. Who knows, maybe just outside the frame of this very image there is a young Crae Morton, straining on his tiptoes to hold up those leafy branches in the foreground while his grandfather snaps the shutter . . .

Early in the process of surveying the Morton collection, I came upon a few mounted images from a “picture story” he had submitted to Life Magazine in 1951—not sure if it was ever published. The title of the photo essay was “Venus Fly Trap Moves Nearer Extinction,” and I was surprised to learn from reading one of the captions that the “moist pine barrens within 40 mile radius of Wilmington, NC are the only spots in the world where [the flytrap] is found growing wild.” News to me!

That same evening (I swear it’s true), I just happened to begin Josephine Humphreys’ novel Nowhere Else on Earth, and what did I read on page 2 but the following beautiful description of the swamps near Wilmington:

Some were pocosins, shallow egg-shaped basins landlocked and still, scattered northwesterly as if a clutch of stars had been flung aslant in one careless toss from heaven, leaving bays that sometimes filled with rain and sometimes dried in the sun, growing gums and poplars and one tiny bright green plant found nowhere else on earth, the toothed and alluring Venus flytrap.

I scanned these two negatives used in the picture story and cropped them almost exactly as Morton did in his enlargements. The image below shows Mrs. Cecil Appleberry (left) and the Cape Fear Garden Club Conservation Committee, at whose insistence, according to Morton’s caption, “a 1951 North Carolina Legislature law restricting commercial shipment of the Venus Fly Trap was enacted.” While presumably a step in the right direction in terms of conservation, Morton also noted that “the real extinction threat comes from drainage.”

These photos highlight not only the conservation history of a rare species, but the fact that Morton himself was interested in native plant protection at this early stage in his career, before he is typically associated with “environmental” causes.

While it has not become extinct, the Venus flytrap still faces threats from a variety of sources. “Vulnerable Venus Flytraps,” an article from the Winter 2006 issue of Nature Conservancy Magazine, describes clever new methods being employed to deter poachers. “Carnivorous Plants in the Southeast Coastal Plain,” a slide show on the Nature Conservancy website, also provides some fascinating background on the flytrap.

When my good friend who works for the Nature Conservancy in NC heard that I was going to be working on the Morton photos, she could barely contain her glee. Hugh Morton, you must understand, is somewhat of a rock star in environmental and land conservation circles. This lovely eulogy by Morton’s good friend and Appalachian State professor Harvard Ayers (a former professor of mine, actually!) details Morton’s legacy and contributions in these areas—donating thousands of acres of land on Grandfather, championing the Linn Cove Viaduct to “minimize the ecological impact of the Blue Ridge Parkway,” and making the influential 1995 documentary “The Search for Clean Air”—to name just a few.

But Morton’s most powerful statements on behalf of nature were his photographs, which he used to great effect to show damage done by pollution and irresponsible development, to document rare and endangered species, and to capture rural life in NC. As these sample images illustrate, his eye for composition and remarkable ability to highlight natural features to their greatest impact made a stronger case for conservation than words could have.

We would love to hear from people who worked with Morton on environmental causes or who saw him in action on this front. Did you attend one of his slide show lectures? When and where? What images stuck with you?