Waterfall Wednesday 4/27/2022

AlanLichty

Moderator
My starter falls for today are 3 of the named Columbia River Gorge waterfalls. This is a wide view from across the Columbia with Multnomah Falls on the left, Wahkeena Falls in the small valley just to the right of center and Mist Falls on the right. Mist Falls is typically just a small shower of falls that is only barely visible most of the year and hardly worth stopping to shoot but i this case it was much more visible while charged from the melting snow above. There are actually several smaller falls within this scene but are not visible at this scale.

CRG-MultnomahWahkeenaMist.jpg


Pile on with your own waterfall images :)

Edit - I darkened the clouds and their reflections a bit as Ken and Jim suggested.

CRG-MultnomahWahkeenaMist2.jpg
 
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Ken Rennie

Well-Known Member
Beautiful image Alan. A landscape with waterfalls. The light on the foreground trees makes it special. My only concern is the bright reflection of the sky at the bottom. I tried cropping it with my hands but it makes the far shore too close to the bottom. I would be very tempted to a little warp applied only to the bottom left to stretch the dark reflection down and then crop about 25% off of the river. My problem is that I am seldom happy with what nature gives us. Ken
 

AlanLichty

Moderator
I have found a previously ignored image from Wales. There were lots of people scrambling around the rocks and I didn't like it with them and it seemed too much work to remove them but content aware fill has made a quick and pretty good job of removing them. Ken
Neat looking scene and quite peaceful to all appearances after your edits. One of the downsides to beautiful scenes is that you rarely have them to yourself.
 

AlanLichty

Moderator
Beautiful image Alan. A landscape with waterfalls. The light on the foreground trees makes it special. My only concern is the bright reflection of the sky at the bottom. I tried cropping it with my hands but it makes the far shore too close to the bottom. I would be very tempted to a little warp applied only to the bottom left to stretch the dark reflection down and then crop about 25% off of the river. My problem is that I am seldom happy with what nature gives us. Ken
Thanks Ken - the original framing of the scene had a lot more of the river in front as well as a lot more sky and I was quite fond of the smooth water and reflections. Its actually quite rare for the Columbia River to be this calm and offering up reflections at all. The problem was that the waterfalls were too small so I cropped the whole thing down to what you see to put more emphasis on the falls. The Columbia River is about 3/4 of a mile wide at this point in the gorge and the falls are on the far side of a freeway so about a mile away.
 

AlanLichty

Moderator
Thanks for starting this Alan. I like your across the river view. I have driven that road many times and never thought to stop for an image like this.

My offering today:

Along McDonald creek in Glacier Park.
I like the scene along the McDonald creek Ben. Good call on the shutter speed for this shot.

You don't actually get the view I showed at the top from WA14 - this was shot from my Mavic 3 while hovering over the Columbia. The roadway view is obscured by trees.
 

JimFox

Moderator
Staff member
My starter falls for today are 3 of the named Columbia River Gorge waterfalls. This is a wide view from across the Columbia with Multnomah Falls on the left, Wahkeena Falls in the small valley just to the right of center and Mist Falls on the right. Mist Falls is typically just a small shower of falls that is only barely visible most of the year and hardly worth stopping to shoot but i this case it was much more visible while charged from the melting snow above. There are actually several smaller falls within this scene but are not visible at this scale.

View attachment 48675

Pile on with your own waterfall images :)
That's one great view Alan!

I do agree with Ken's thoughts on the sky being perhaps too bright. I know that's probably what it was on a bright cloudy day, but I wonder for the photos purpose if you took just the sky and darkened it some, or used the highlight slider in ACR to pull it down some how it might look?
 

JimFox

Moderator
Staff member
I have found a previously ignored image from Wales. There were lots of people scrambling around the rocks and I didn't like it with them and it seemed too much work to remove them but content aware fill has made a quick and pretty good job of removing them. Ken
View attachment 48677
Wow Ken! Perhaps this is one of the more beautiful waterfalls I have seen in a while. I like the way it seems to kind of zig zag down the screen. There is so much beautiful in this.
 

JimFox

Moderator
Staff member
McWay Falls in Big Sur from last week. It was a bright afternoon, the camera captured it with deep shadows in order not to blow out the highlights. I recovered the shadows in ACR, but decided I actually liked the more darker shadow look of the unedited Raw, so I slide the Black and Shadow Sliders back down closer to 0.

_D851284_dw.jpg
 

AlanLichty

Moderator
McWay Falls in Big Sur from last week. It was a bright afternoon, the camera captured it with deep shadows in order not to blow out the highlights. I recovered the shadows in ACR, but decided I actually liked the more darker shadow look of the unedited Raw, so I slide the Black and Shadow Sliders back down closer to 0.
This treatment of the shadows works quite well here. Nice timing on the waves and a good shutter speed for the scene.
 

AlanLichty

Moderator
Beautiful image Alan. A landscape with waterfalls. The light on the foreground trees makes it special. My only concern is the bright reflection of the sky at the bottom. I tried cropping it with my hands but it makes the far shore too close to the bottom. I would be very tempted to a little warp applied only to the bottom left to stretch the dark reflection down and then crop about 25% off of the river. My problem is that I am seldom happy with what nature gives us. Ken
That's one great view Alan!

I do agree with Ken's thoughts on the sky being perhaps too bright. I know that's probably what it was on a bright cloudy day, but I wonder for the photos purpose if you took just the sky and darkened it some, or used the highlight slider in ACR to pull it down some how it might look?
I darkened the cloud layer as well as the reflections a bit as suggested. This has turned into a very different scene than what I started with but it works specifically as a waterfall image.
 

AlanLichty

Moderator
I like your edit Alan. The reflections also look sharper in the edit.
I darkened the river a bit as well. The original scene had a huge spread of a mirror like river with all of the sky reflected. This was shot from about a mile away just out from the Washington shoreline using the 24mm lens/camera on the Mavic 3 so was a much wider view of the Oregon cliffs and falls. The clouds and the reflections were the original subject although the scene had these falls as well.
 

JimFox

Moderator
Staff member
I darkened the river a bit as well. The original scene had a huge spread of a mirror like river with all of the sky reflected. This was shot from about a mile away just out from the Washington shoreline using the 24mm lens/camera on the Mavic 3 so was a much wider view of the Oregon cliffs and falls. The clouds and the reflections were the original subject although the scene had these falls as well.
It works well. I think I have always driven that on the Oregon side. I would like to take the Washington side, and of course finally visit the waterfall on that side, I think it's Spirit Falls?
 

AlanLichty

Moderator
It works well. I think I have always driven that on the Oregon side. I would like to take the Washington side, and of course finally visit the waterfall on that side, I think it's Spirit Falls?
There are several waterfalls in the Washington side but none of the permanent falls are along the WA14. The Spirit Falls trailhead is on the road just west of Drano Lake along WA14.
 
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