Elowah Falls + Repost

Elowah falls in winter. March 2010. Columbia River Gorge, Oregon. The water was very low and I really had to hunt for interesting comps. I liked this one with the foreground triangle create by the water which points to the large fall in the background. All comments/critiques are appreciated.

Nikon D80, 12-24mm Dx 1.0 sec at f/16, ISO 200.

Wow...the water is low...scary for March. Great work Scott. Exposure and processing all look really nice. Perhaps a slight blown out area of water at the top of the triangle. I also like the triangle formed by the rocks in the FG, as well as all the lines that lead toward the center of the image. A couple very minor suggestions that I could offer would be to crop/clone out the rock on the bottom edge that is pulling my eye out of the frame. The left side also feels a tad squeezed with the black rock and small bit of white water going out that side. I might have played with composing slightly more to the right to crop out the water or gone wider to allow more of it in. Very minor suggestions on a great piece.

Good work Scott. Did you use a polarizer on this shot? That might have helped with the blown out area. I might have given more space toward the top as well. This will make a very nice print.

Sean and Erik. Thank you so much for your detailed critique of my image. Erik, I had the polarizer on for this one. Here is version 2.0. I adjusted the crop to include more on top and excluded the rock on the bottom. I also toned down the bright spot on the foreground water.

Scott, I like the second one. First one's fine too, but the second one has a more pleasing comp and is more relaxing to view....interesting how just a little change can make such a big difference. This is definitely one of the better shots of this waterfall.

Wonderfully magical, Scott. I like the extra room on 2.0. I had assumed there was just gray sky above (which is sometimes a good reason to crop tight above the falls in the gorge), but with the extra bit of mossy green, we enveloped in the deep greenness of the place and all its water. This is one of those shots that is hard to appreciate fully on a horizontal screen. I'd love to see this printed.

Technical question: to get this level of sharpness throughout, did you use hyperfocal distance or some other focus point?

Marylnne -thanks for your comment. I used hyperfocal distance here.