Langfield Falls

Well this is waterfall number 2 for me where the log is not asthetically pleasing (the other being punch bowl). But I like the falls otherwise and would love to see this thing at full flow!

Last June, I finally bought a good wide angle zoom. I've spent the last 3 years or so shooting almost exclusively with a tele-zoom because the only wide angle I had was the crappy kit lens.

So to get to the point, now that I have a wide angle lens, I've been working on near/far compositions. I think I succeeded with this shot, but if anyone has advise/suggestions for my future efforts, I'd love to hear them.

The little cascade in the FG is about 18-24 inches from the front of the lens, and it was my focus point.

Thanks for looking!

Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL
9/8/2007 2:07:06 PM
4sec @ f22
ISO 100
Tamron 17-50 @ 17mm
polarizer
tripod
IR remote
Double processed and blended with a blur mask.

I like it. Is it a composite? Looks like the foregrounf of the falls has more blur and texture than the main falls.

Thanks David. I forgot to mention in the notes that I double processed the RAW file. So in a sense it's a composite, but it's two versions of the same image blended with a blur mask.

Curtis,
It looks like that lens will serve you well. Your on the right track IMHO. A couple of things I notice is that it looks a little oversharpened and the placement of those logs.

I think it's a good shot, comp-wise, Curtis. Funny, the log doesn't bother me as much in this one as I thought it would. Don't trees just have that way of coming DOWN right exactly where you want to compose a waterfall shot. The bg cascade has a lot of nice texture. So how come you blurred out the fg one? Makes me curious about how it looked before the blend. Anyway, great dof. And the favorite little thing I noticed and love about this is the way the huge boulder on the left is balanced so that water flows under it.

Thanks for the mask link, Curtis - I always learn something new when I come here!

I like this photo in terms of the wide composition, though I'd consider a crop down to the bottom of the blue sliver of sky in the upper right. Summer waterfall shots are tough! The logs don't bother me at all.

Thanks folks!
Catherine, this is all one frame, double processed so the exposure is identical for both the highlight and shadow layers. the FG cascade is falling relatively unobstructed so there aren't the same conditions to create texture in the flow. The blending had no effect on the texture of the flow. I called it a blur blend be cause the process uses a gausian blur layer mask to blend the highlight and shadow layers. I'm not really sure why this works (and it doesn't work for every image) but when it does it's much quicker and easier than painting the mask.

Tom, thanks for the cropping suggestion. I'll probably never print this. It was mainly DOF practice for near/far comps.