Latourell Falls

This is a photo from last April. I've played with it several times since then, and have not been real happy with it. In the full-frame shot I wasn't real happy with the balance of the composition, so I've chopped off the right side and turned it into a vertical. It is blended for DOF, and also had focus issues at full resolution. I went back in and did some time consuming hand-masking to get around them. Even now it's not perfect, but would be hard to pick up on.

When I took this I was playing around with taking photos out of the golden hours. This was taken at ~11:30 (10:30 without DST). I still have a lot to learn in that regard, but I liked how the light was "dappling" the scene and really making the yellow in the new vegetation glow.

Thanks so much for the thoughts on my last post, and I'd love to hear any thoughts/suggestions on this one.

*edit* This looks a little crunchy on the monitors at work. How does the sharpening look on yours?

This looks great on my monitor (a little crunchy around the edges of leaves, but I think it's the compression and laptop monitor I'm using). I love what you did with this scene. It's not an easy waterfall to shoot, and the trees taking the place of what are almost always blown skies for me, well that works wonderfully.

I really like this composition with the flowers in the foreground. I have never seen the falls shot from this angle with the foreground foliage. Very original!

Awesome composition, John. As Erik said, never seen this one before. The colors are fantastic. Nice Spring scene. Well done.

Oh this is just disgustingly good! It's a bit crisp, but not objectionably so. What a wonderful vantage point. The wildflowers in the foreground are what makes this an exceptional image for me. Your hard work to create this image in the field, and in the digital darkroom with the added processing, really paid off, going by your description of the workflow.

And thank you! This proves that very impressive images can be made outside of the "golden hours."

I love the POV and composition as a vertical shot. I also live the natural flow from top to bottom with the falls, moss and foliage green framing, hill contour and finally the floral color splash in the foreground. My green color blindness may offer the most accurate rating but it looks pleasingly green and I love it John, congrats!

Thanks for all the kind comments!

For those interested in this comp, I took this photo from the upper viewpoint just down the slope from the low wall that separates the viewpoint from the slope. The photo is deceptive, the slope the flowers are on is actually quite steep, and one of the reasons I couldn't get the full-frame comp that I would have prefered was that my footing was a little less sure than I wanted.

Here's another go, with minor adjustments. (When I post these in a thread, I usually look at them a few more times checking the thread and almost always find things I want to do differently as the photo "settles" to my eye.) I mostly wanted to sharpen less, but ended up adjusting contrast a bit too, so it may look just as crunchy as the original .

Personally I'd crop down on the top and leave just a little breathing room there above the fall. Just a personal preference...lovely shot John.

Michael

Pretty pretty! Nice job. I may agree with a little crop down also. :)

Very cool image John. I've never seen one like this from Latourell before. Repost looks great.