Mosquito Falls
I have a confession: I don't usually enjoy photographing waterfalls. I enjoy waterfalls very much, and I like to visit them, to look at them and listen to them. But the process of creating photographs of them is often not much fun. There are several reasons for this.
If they're well-known waterfalls, there are usually crowds—even hordes—of people, and people tend to jostle and bump and shove and make it difficult to set up tripods, find a good position, and get things done.
Even uncrowded waterfalls can be physically challenging, requiring climbing down into a gorge or ravine, and clambering over rocks and fallen logs which are wet and slippery. Setting up a tripod and getting it level on a very uneven, sometimes hazardous spot, is not fun. The water is usually cold, and always wet.
Waterfalls are often places of extreme contrast: very dark shadows and rocks right next to the very bright white of the the water. This is even worse when streaks of sunlight find their way down into the ravine, through the trees, and land on that white, frothing water. Cameras don't like huge differences of brightness within the same frame. I don't either.
When I'm trying to shoot a waterfall, I often mutter. Sometimes I grumble. I may even gripe. To myself, under my breath, I mean. In my interactions with other people, I'm a model of restraint. Really, I am. >*harumph*<
Another reason I grumble about shooting waterfalls is that I seldom get a final result that I'm happy with. Oh, I have a few waterfall photos that I like. But only a few.
On the October day I photographed Mosquito Falls, there was not a large crowd of people. I think the hike out to the falls discouraged them. There was some up-and-down climbing along the way, but nothing really arduous. Getting into positions that had a good perspective for a shot was challenging, and more than once I nearly fell—or dropped my gear—into the river. But the other challenge was the light. It was rather dark in the woods, but the fickle sun kept finding its way through, to create bright spots. I sputtered and frittered and fiddled and fussed for half the afternoon, and still didn't get a shot I was really pleased with. About an hour into the shoot, my camera started giving me the dreaded "Err" and that made me grumble, too. I tried changing batteries, and memory cards, and even lenses, and it still remained in its error condition, and then suddenly, for no discernable reason, it started working again. Maybe it just doesn't enjoy photographing waterfalls either.
Tech stuff: the extreme “silky” effect for flowing water is very much in vogue these days, and I like it sometimes, but I do think it can be over used and over done. This 1/10” exposure is rather pushing the limit, for my taste. So I also made an exposure with a faster shutter, which I think gives a better indication of the water’s force and power, by allowing more of its texture to show.