Dry Creek Falls, Summer

The lighting is pretty fantastic here.  Great job controlling the light, though the top seems a bit bright but natural.  Not much can be done unless you blend in a darker exposure for some of the sky up there.  Some of the ferns look a little fuzzy with the .3 exposure.  Maybe you have a fast er shutter exposure to blend in those areas, unless you wanted the breeziness to come through.  The sunny spot on the LRC takes my eye nicely through the image.  Really well done.

delicious light in the scene, Daniel! Gorgeous stuff! The only suggestion I have is to reduce the glow perhaps in the image as some of the details look fuzzy

Some nice light and conditions. The glow seems a bit lumpy and forced as does the orton look applied to the back wall.

You made this mundane falls look very nice. The sunburst is well done and the viewpoint you chose is about as good as you can get at this location.

I would be happy with this  although I agree the sun rays could use a little tightening. 

What a gorgeous scene! Excellent use of the sun here, with those rays in the mist. That adds a lot of drama I think. A very minor nit would be that the brightest leaves look a bit funky due to overexposure. Maybe if you could add some green to those areas they would look more fitting. But as said, not a big deal at all, this is very sweet.

Its a pity you didn't take two shots........one with a fast shutter speed and another with a slow shutter speed so that you could have blended them together using the fast shutter speed to have the background sharp and the slow shutter to blur the water.
Also the greens could do with de-saturating just a wee bitty...............lovely scene though

This has a nice mood and looks natural to me. The slight softness of the plants above the shaded cascade bother me a little, but the image still works very well for me.

--P

Love the way the light spills in on this one Daniel. I agree that a little less glow/Orton would sharpen this a tad.

Daniel,

A beautiful image of the falls, surrounding greens - all of the elements working together, including the sunstar and rays.  

At first, the original view has me confused a little - is this too much "glow" or is it simply the movement of some of the plants - but then some are sharp and not blurred.  The larger view helps and looks less Orton-like and more just a matter of plants blowing in the breeze created by the falling water.

I think you handled the dynamic range very well.  Sure, a couple hot leaves, but understandable and not an issue for me.

As much as I think the sunstar and "v" at the top work here, I also think there is an alternate presentation by cropping that element out. That focuses more on the greenery, the water, rocks below and let's the waterfall and rays through the mist contribute, but not necessarily be the main show.  Anyway you slice it, I like the more and more the longer I look.

Lon

This has a Garden of Eden look to it. A place of great earthly delights. You are the master of Columbia Gorge work IMO. I wonder if you would consider cropping some of the right side off just past the bright leaf in the lrc. That would give you a format that supports the vertical nature of the image and more importantly place the primary focus on that central rock where it belongs. But I like this composition as is very much as well.