If at first you don’t succeed, try again…and this time bring your ND filter!
It was a Wednesday. I had gotten enough done in my commercial work to satisfy client requests for the day. It was slightly overcast and it had recently rained, so impulsively I loaded up the truck and headed out to Falls Creek to redeem myself and my flawed waterfall experiment. This time I took another buddy, but he was slightly shorter than Jeremy.
Wyatt is always up for an adventure. Even when Dad springs it on him and he actually has no idea where we’re even going. The prospect of getting a vanilla bean Frappuccino always helps too.
As spontaneously as I jumped at the chance to re-do this shot, I DID actually have a plan. I fully expected the falls to be raging again from the recent rain, and thus I expected the leaves to be blowing a bit. It was slightly windier than the previous day too, but my plan should account for that too. I also brought along my ND filter, so I fully expected to use a lower f-stop and a LONGER shutter speed, so my solution for moving leaves? I had an idea.
I planned to shoot two full Panoramas of the falls. One with my ideal slow shutter speed and ISO to capture the falls and the rocks with smooth water motion. Then I’d shoot a second exposure with much higher ISO and faster shutter speed to “freeze” the blowing leaves. If everything lined up ok in Photoshop, I could mask out the blurred areas and reveal the crisp leaves beneath.
Just as I expected the water was swift. It wasn’t like the first day, so setting up the tripod was a bit easier. Also, just as I expected, the water was indeed blowing the foliage on the rock. I was both nervous and excited about getting this shot, but I took my time and really worked the scene. Wyatt is always a great little traveller and he was busy playing in the creek with sticks behind me, so I had ample time to concentrate to get this one right.
I shot several exposures. Using my Nodal Ninja gimbal head, I fired away HDR brackets at multiple positions. The exposures ranged from 8-15 seconds at ISO 64. Once I had the composition and captured frames in the can, I took off the ND filter and cranked up my ISO to 6400 and 1/60 shutter. Both were shot at 24mm. Everything went just as I had planned. Until on my way out. I accidentally stepped into water about 4 shades deeper green than were I was standing and I sank down well past my knee, nearly taking the tripod down with me. I got a boot-full of water, but apart from that, everything was very smooth.
Back at home, I couldn’t wait to offload and process these images! Would my plan work?
Here’s the original photo, edited for exposure, contrast, slight sharpening and a few places dodged and burned:
This is what I saw when I brought the edited panorama into Photoshop.
Notice the leaves, blurred as expected.
Now check out this quite un-appealing faster shutter speed image:
It’s not the prettiest image for sure, but a necessary element in making the final composite.
It’s a little more noisy, but the Nikon Z7 handles the 6400 ISO famously and gave me just what I needed with this more crisp specimen for the foliage on the center rock.
The composite of both images.
In Photoshop, I simply added both exported panoramas to a canvas and used “Auto-Align Layers” to stack them perfectly in alignment with each other. Because my tripod was rock solid, it had no problem in completing the task. Then I simply created a layer mask on the top layer which happened to be the long exposure (main) image, then using a smallish, soft brush, I painted out the blurred areas, revealing the sharper sibling photo underneath. It was both fun and very satisfying to watch those blurred leaves vanish!
One thing I LOVE about long exposure brackets is you have so much time while the camera is doing its thing.
I stood there, listening to the raging water, feeling the power of it flowing past my feet. I watched the bubbles swirl and cascade over the rocks, wondering how this waterfall must have changed over the years. I became amused by the little plants growing on “my” rock in the center of the stream, wondering how long they’d be there. Would any of them make it into a large tree? I noticed the fallen tree in the background and wondered if a storm had brought it down over the falls. I wondered how many cubic feet of water had flown over these very rocks. For our entire lives, this falls has been running. It spoke to me about the constant energy of God. Never ceasing, always moving. Tirelessly, and beautifully shaping the world.
There’s something captivating about waterfalls. Why are we so drawn to them? What is it about them that seems to calm the soul? You always come away refreshed—sometimes literally refreshed if you take the plunge and swim around them, but emotionally refreshed at the very least.
I’ve decided that because Falls Creek is such a special place, and it’s been so critical in the shaping of my heart, I’ve decided that a substantial portion of the proceeds from the lifetime sale of prints from this image will be donated to Falls Creek to pay tuition and fees to help kids attend summer camp here at Falls Creek.
I hope you enjoy this 2nd attempt at Price’s Falls at Falls Creek! If you’re interested in a wall print of this image, click here.