Sunrise Photos today

I went out at about 4:30 a.m. wanting to shoot some fog or see one of those fogbows Mike has seen lately. It didn't look like much would form except near the river, so I headed up to Weston, Missouri after hearing things about the scenery there...and was amazed on how picture perfect everything is there. Century old trees that will top any tree within the KC metro area, with a lot of overgrowth and hills along the Missouri made this a new, must-shoot area for me.

If you can find your way to Weston, follow the very scenic highway 243 north/northwest to a small town called Iatan. Make a right and just follow that road and choose any road from there and you'll see what I'm talking about. Amazing, and I never knew it was there...large tobacco, yes, tobacco farms are all sprung over there.

Pictures of the tobacco plants and a view from an 80 acre farm of it...











At sunrise, I'm not even sure where I was, but it was pretty close to the river and as I left noticed a "No Trespassing" sign on a barn where I took this farmer's road up to this.
There wasn't this much light out when I shot them, I did 20-30 second exposures at 400 ISO, iirc.

Click to enlarge, it's really annoying how small my template/blogger makes them:





I then left after the tobacco field excursion and went NW of Iatan and shot some fog (pics soon) hovering over a nuclear power plant and then continued back on the highway after a very scenic drive with very old barns, huge barns, some painted with American flags, some cherry red and very well-maintained. I couldn't believe the size of some of these trees, some I'd say were nearly 100 foot high and trunks as wide as my car. The overgrowth was like a jungle, I couldn't imagine trying to walk even a mile in that shit. I took a road behind the town of Iatan and snaked my way around this "mountain" it reminded me of till I came upon a fork in the road which had this as a view:





Notice the old barn in the right corner of the photo, literally dozens of these everywhere:



I then made my way back towards the river which was on the opposite side of the highway on another road I couldn't tell you, and the sun was starting to peek through the unwanted cloud deck, but I never did see a fogbow. But I snapped this looking back east:



I then made my way back towards the (I guess) nuclear power plant, as for some reason it was real thick there, and was snapping photos when a security guard pulled up behind his property's gate (I was parked in the middle of the county road, which was desolate). He told me I couldn't take pictures since it was...blah blah. I told him I was taking pics of the fog not the power plant, and in the same tone he started the convo with me in, told me to, "Get the hell out of here." I explained I was on a public road and was not shooting pictures of this plant he was proudly guarding (although I was earlier that morning) and he then uses a louder, firmer tone repeating the same thing. I laughed and told him to have a great day and watched him pencil in my license plate. I angled it better for him to get a good view (this guy's old, and has some coke bottles on) and asked, "Did you get it written down?" He told me he did as I see him pick up his cell phone, which prompted me to shout some obscenities at him before leaving the public road I was on. It probably would have pissed me off any other day, but I laughed about it and headed back towards Platte City, but stopping to shoot this on the highway



I talked to Mike for a bit that morning and he told me he had found a new awesome spot and could see an ocean-like scene of fog below him. I'll probably post more pics tomorrow.