2013 Appalachian Trail Thru-Hike Photos

During my thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail I had two constant companions: my journal and my camera. I love taking pictures and trying to get the photographs to reflect the beauty and enchantment that I find on the trail and in the woods. All of the photos that I took with my good camera remained trapped on my camera until I got off of the trail in October and could finally download them onto a computer and look through them. As you might imagine, I took a lot of pictures in the five months that I was on the trail. Below is a sampling of some of my favorites.

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For the AT, I brought the Sony NEX-5N with the 18-55mm/ f3.5-5.6 OSS lens. It was a bit big by thru-hiking standards, but seemed to be the perfect compromise between the much heavier and much more expensive DSLRs and the standard point-and-shoots. I was a little concerned about how it well it would do when faced with the brutal treatment and conditions I knew I was bound to subject it to on the trail, but it held up impressively well. I had only two complaints about it on the trail, 1) I didn’t feel comfortable using it in the heavy rains that I experienced fairly often so those sections of the trail are not well documented with photos and 2) the 18-55 lens didn’t give me enough zoom to take good, high quality photos of the wildlife that I encountered along the trail.