Badger makes a yearly sojourn to an esteemed gathering of the finest in Southern Appalachian photography. The Nature Photography Weekend on Grandfather Mountain is a grand event with able presenters and highly capable shutterbugs.

One of the seminal events is the Photo Contest, but the organizers had no category for “Badger in the Wild.” Nevertheless, two of the previous award winners decided that this unofficial category was appropriate in the year of Helene where everything was turned upside down anyway.

Seizing on the moniker “Disaster Personality” given to Badger by one television producer, photographers Ben Albright and Robert Hopkins (Hop) Ridgell decided to make Badger a star attraction. Hop is responsible for the undeniably classic photo of Badger pinned against a rock at Cliffside in 50 mph winds. The result looks like we eased into this scene, but the Hop’s effort to get the shot belies the actual difficulty of the shoot.

Photo by Ben Albright

Conversely, Ben took a different approach, nailing a Badger moment at the initial meeting of the weekend. Ben was ostensibly “trying out” a new lens – the result he expertly mastered just as he has mastered a lengthy legal career in North Carolina.

More will be revealed about the weekend, but these are undoubtedly two of the best photos of Badger as the photographer being photographed.

Kudos to these guys who are great friends of mine and we see each other every year. Hopefully that reunion will continue to occur for many years into the future.

Thomas Mabry – Honey Badger Images

Many of the HoneyBadgerImages are on display at instagram.com/honeybadgerimages.

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