Here is the second part of the North Dayton Waterfall trip I took part of with a local meetup group OVCC. Again this was an awesome trip and I can’t wait to go back again to these falls at a different time of the year.
This image is a different spot at Ludlow Falls. I am not too far from the location of the first image I posted, but I really liked the look of these rocks in the foreground. Again I used a CPL filter to reduce the glare on the water exposing the rocks and a Lee Big Stopper filter to slow the shutter speed to smooth out the water. The image below was shot with Canon 5D mk II, f/16, 130 seconds, ISO 200.
The image below is one of my favorites from the trip. This waterfall Arens Falls, was really cool and I want to go back because I have a bunch more ideas I want to do here. The bright green algae growing just under the shallow water really caught my eye so I set up to accentuate it with the waterfall. I think it turned out very well. I thought I was going to have to cut out the rocks in the foreground at first because they had some nasty glare on them but I was able to bring them back to looking normal. I used the Lee Little Stopper for this image to lengthen the exposure allowing for the smooth water and the bubbles to become a stream. The exposure was with my 5d mkII, 17-40mm lens @ 22mm, f/11, 80 seconds, ISO 400.
This last image is from La Mantra falls, I converted to B&W because I wasn’t thrilled with the way the colors worked out. The water was a brownish and just didn’t look good. The B&W brought out the details in the rocks and hid the ugly water color. Again I used a long exposure to create the bubble “streams.” I picked a spot with my tripod in the water that the water was flowing towards so the “streams” would come right at the camera. This was the first falls we visited that day and I am glad it worked out. For this shot I again used the 5D mkII (the only camera I have), the 17-40mm Canon lens @ 23mm, f/16, 130s, ISO 400.
If you are wondering why on several of these I used the settings I did there is a rhyme and a reason for each one. First the aperture (f-stop), I typically try and keep between f/8 or f/11 to keep the sharpness at the highest point. However, when there is something close in the foreground such as the first and last image I will sometimes bump to f/16 to make sure everything stays in focus. The Canon 17-40mm lens doesn’t lose much at all in sharpness when stopping down to f/16 so I don’t worry to much about it. The ISO is probably the other one that may seem out of place. On two of these I bumped it up to ISO 400 and I did this to shorten my shutter speed. When working with a 6 stop and a 10 stop ND filter sometimes if there is lower light the exposure time can get to be 8+ minutes, so to bring it down to a reasonable time I bump it up. With my camera there is no loss is quality that is noticeable at these low ISO values.
This was a really fun trip and I hope to find a few more images to post. There is another waterfall or two that I haven’t posted any images yet from so keep checking back. They were the more difficult falls to photograph so hopefully I can find some good ones.
Thanks for looking!