The world looks different to a photographer than it does to everyone else. Through the eye of their lens, they see the light, details, shadows, highlights, shapes, and how they interact with each other. For years, Darryl has chronicled the ebb and flow of life on the world-famous Tail of the Dragon. A twisty ribbon of highway perched high in the Great Smokey Mountains serves as a scenic backdrop for man and machine bent on a deeper connection to the road.
The Dragon is an mile stretch of pavement with challenging curves, all of which test skill, patience, and courage. This article is the last of three from our in-depth interview with Darryl. For this installment, we talked to Darryl about the dangers of the Dragon becoming too popular and the gear he uses to capture those amazing photos. We also get into the reasons he started his new Patreon membership service. Nobody other than the locals cared about it.
Are you worried the Tail of the Dragon could become a victim of its fame and become too overcrowded? If it gets too busy, then people get frustrated and stop coming.
Then it slows down, and it becomes fun again, and people come back. Last weekend was pretty wild. There were Camaros up here doing a rally. It clogged things up in the middle of the day on Saturday, so some people left. Middle of the day on a Friday, Saturday, and sometimes Sunday, it can be frustratingly busy. You can go out there and pick one of those hundred-plus pull-offs in the shade and watch the show go by for hours. One of the questions everyone was asking me before this interview was what gear and lenses you used to get those incredible photographs.
So, to shoot a slower shutter speed than we already are, it would be aesthetically more pleasing. On a track day, when a vehicle keeps going by, then you can do things like that. Take those chances. So we try with the shutter speed to not make cars and bikes look parked on the road frozen. We also use high-end gear with professional lenses. The Nikon gear is strong, too. We started out using Canon gear, and now we can interchange if we need to. We run through a lot of shutter counts on these cameras.
