Cabin Creek Falls | May 3

This one is a bit outside my comfort zone, but I thought I'd give it a try. Most people shoot close shots of the base of this falls, but I liked the logs crossing the stream below the falls. Cropped this close to eliminate some of the clutter, since it's a very busy scene. Still too cluttered?

Any comments and suggestions appreciated - thanks!

Olympus E510, 11-22mm lens at 11mm, cropped, f16 at about 1/2 second, polarizer

Yeah, definitely too cluttered. The tree at the top works well, but all that junk blocking the stream is what does it in. Of course that dastardly boulder doesn't help things either.

I found all that clutter prohibitive when I was there too, Tom. It's just overpowering. I guess it kind of works in some ultra-layered way, if you like sitting back and deciphering everything for a minute or two, but I suspect the aesthetic will be lost on many who don't take the time.

In other words, like the poster my dentist has on his ceiling..? The kind of photo that takes a good, long root canal to appreciate..?

If this was cleared out some it would be excellent with those crossed logs - but agree as Marc mentioned that there is some study time involved to have this all sink in....

Tom, lol! Too funny. the buzz of the creek and the buzz of the drill eh? well, no pain here, pretty soon the creeks will be covered with leaves and pretty much invisible.

I'm going to go against the grain here, I like this, and don't find it too cluttered. I love seeing the pattern of the waterfall and stream filter through the pattern of the foliage. Beautiful spring scene.

I was looking at this again, and maybe there is another picture in a picture here. If you crop just above the top tree that is horizontal....? You have the cliff, the nice tree on the left and the falls.

You could do that, Cliff... but then you'd only have enough interest for minor dental work...

When I took a second look at this crop, it suddenly brought back a latent memory of what used to be known as "dorm posters" - they were long, skinny posters that would fit easily on dorm room doors, or other small spaces. I had two: Oneonta Gorge and Oneonta Falls (the one at the end of the Gorge). Revealing my antiquity a bit, here: I'm pretty sure those poster were flanked by the "Farah in red swimsuit" and some sort of Primo Beer poster...

Thanks for the comments, everyone!

Hhhmm, well the lower horz branches are fine and do add to this image. What I do find a little distracting are some of the smaller branches that seem to be going a variety of directions. Looks like a tough shoot and since I have not been there I really can't say what I would different on this one.

I like the narrow crop, and the vegetation is very nice here. I enjoy shots where waterfalls are filtered through vegetation, but past a certain point you begin to loose the water too much and the cohesiveness of the photo suffers. For my taste this photo borders on that, especially at the bottom of the falls.

Well, Tom, having a root canal would just ruin this "poster" for me forever. Would much rather have it up where i can stare it when I'm in one of those "faraway look" kind of moods...

I'm just gonna say that this is the best darnedest PNW grand landscape of a waterfall I've ever seen. It's cluttered, messy, tangly and GREEN in layers upon layers. As for the "dastardly boulder?" Cover it with some moss! I like it for how well it conveys the PNW landscape and breaks all rules of aesthetics in photography. This is long version of the PNW landscape story. i'm familiar with it cover to cover; it's comforting in that way.

Ha! Well, thanks Catherine and John for your faith in brush-pile photography! Just to prove that I showed a TINY bit of restraint in the amount of debris in the previous photo, here's an alternate shot that gives a better picture of just how extensive the organic layer is in this spot! I'm pretty sure you could make it all the way to the falls by leaping from log to log...

Thanks for the comments!

I'd go for one log crossing the stream but not two. I like this kind of shot actually, being too "clean", to me, gets quite generic real quick.

Tom! LOL Ha-ha-ha... brush-pile photography!

Don't forget, Zack is in on this too! I agree with him that this is a wonderfully uncommon, seasonal Spring shot of the NW. See? You made it work here. The rest of us just have egg on our faces for trying and... well, uh... not succeeding as well as you did.

And the "alternate shot" is EVEN BETTER in the same darn way!

I really like this just as its presented here. It doesn't feel too cluttered to me.

There's obviously a LOT of waterfall photography around here; when it's primarily the falls filling the frame, they all tend to start looking alike. I'm sure that the longer I live here, the more discriminating I'll become, but from the perspective of someone who isn't intimately familiar with the nuances of each different set of falls, it becomes tough to identify, much less appreciate, those nuances in the standard shot with the falls front and center.

The added context makes this for me. There's a lot going on, but the two logs lend order to the "clutter" as well as some complimentary visual interest. Only nit is the nearly blown area near the base of the falls. The tree in front of it helps mitigate the impact, but if you could pull in that highlight, it would help.