I vacationed in the mountains this weekend, around the Maggie Valley area. My gf and I did some hiking and went to several waterfalls over the vacation. Here are some pictures of the falls. CC as always. Keep in mind that many of these pictures were taken on an overcast day. This is a curse and a blessing. It requires less use of an ND filter to capture the wispy falls look, but at the same time since the sky is gray or white, it tends to get blown out. The best time IMHO to get a waterfall is on a clear day. First. This is Soco falls, just off of US 19 between Maggie Valley and Cherokee NC. There is a trail to a large overlook. However, the second picture does require a little steep scrambling to get to. The trail even goes farther down to the base of the falls, but after the rain, the trail to the bottom was trecherous. The gallery contains slightly larger images. This is from the middle tier of the trail: This is looking glass falls. This is off of 276 just north of Brevard NC. This waterfall is right off the road and there is an overlook. A better view can be had by just taking the stairs down to the bottom of the waterfalls. That is where this picture was taken. This is Hookerfalls in Dupont state park, just east of Brevard. This was actually an unplanned trip. From the parking lot, the falls are on an easy .3 mile hike. This is a picture from above. The trail continues to go down to the bottom. This next one is Triple falls. From the same parking lot, its about .5 miles up the river. The first part of the hike is pretty easy, but then for about .25 miles there's about a 45 degree incline. That just takes you to the overlook and thats where this picture was taken. The trail does have a ton of stairs leading down to a flat rocky area that sits above the lowest falls and below the two higher falls. We went down there and I got several pictures as well. Funny thing is, there is another waterfall up the trail, but once we got done with this one, it poured down rain so we headed back down the muddy 45 degree grade! Lastly, this is what they call the Lower falls at Graveyard Fields. This is off of the Blue Ridge Parkway, just east of where state road 215 intersects the parkway. From the parking lot, its about a .3 mile downhill hike. Of course, getting back to the parking lot was much harder. Some people were able to go across the rocks at the bottom to get a better view, and I attempted it, but I'm not really cat like or part mountain goat so I came back to the trail.
Superb photographs and well judged speeds to get just the right feeling into the flow of the water. Now, is the gf your GF1 or the girl friend? Barrie
Actually, this was shot with my PEN, LOL. The gf is my girlfriend.... Thank you for the compliments. One would think that waterfalls would be an easy subject, but I have found them over the years to be extremly challenging. Lighting is important, but so is understanding scale. The problem is, if someone is in the photo near the falls, it can show scale of the falls, but also detract from the photo as well. I try my best to show scale without having a reference.
DJ, these are outstanding! I particularly like the 3rd. If it had enough light to match the vibrance of the first 2, it would really be something special. So much contrast in the varying earthy tones and colors.
I'm a bit late to the waterfall thread, but just wanted to add my thanks in writing. My favorite is your third, as well. I think it's super the way it is, but wonder if you'd tried cropping in from the right, just to the left of the lower hanging tree branch, you might like it even more? Yes, you'd cut out that part of the tree and a bunch of the lower river stones on the lower right, however you might find that it gives the image more power and focus on that beauty of a water fall. See what you think. For the 4th, I'd try cropping in from the right again - removing the extraneous branches as much as you can without losing the falls... I can understand the difficulty of the sky vs the falls in these and think that maybe if you cut out the sky in your last two that we'd be able to focus on the lushness of the trees, etc., and concentrate on the water itself. The sky is distracting because of its light color, or almost no color. See what you think. On that one of the Triple Falls, you might even want to crop up a bit - I think the photograph will do much better and is worth it for those falls, Jason. I feel the same about your final shot - get rid of all the sky...see what you think and consider whether or not you want to keep all the lower rocks/boulders or not... Once you get rid of the sky, you may even want to add more clarity and/or vibrancy...and perhaps the main subject won't need to be quite so dark? I'm just speculating and wouldn't even suggest this but since you asked - I figured why not throw in my thoughts. You did really well with a difficult subject and tough lighting but I think you can make these sing even more beautifully.
