Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Waterfalls

Posted by Tom Dowling at 11:20 PM

Vol. 1 No. 46

This past weekend, my wife Roz and I took an impromptu trip to the Finger Lakes region of Western New York State.  With very little pre-planning, we packed up the car and headed out on a 5 hour ride to beautiful upstate New York.

Waterfalls_Oct2009-013Upper Buttermilk Falls

The purpose of this last minute getaway was to photograph the numerous waterfalls in the area surrounding Watkins Glen and Ithaca.

We were fortunate to have our trusty TomTom 430s GPS nav unit along for the trip.  This device allowed me to enter a list of the falls we wanted to visit and their coordinates as an itinerary.  What a great feature.  Here are the coordinates we used:
  • Eagle Cliff Falls   N42º19.908', W76º49.080'
  • She-Qua-Ga Falls  N42º20.683', W76º51.083'
  • Hector Falls  N42º25.066', W76º51.933'
  • Watkins Glen State Park  N42º22.05', W76º54.04'
  • Taughannock Falls  N42º32.133', W76º36.666'
  • Buttermilk Falls  N42º24.66', W76º30.799' 
Our favorite locations were Watkins Glen State Park, Buttermilk Falls and the impressive 215 foot plunging Taughannock Falls.  All three had beautiful well-defined trails along their gorges and upper rims.  I could easily spend a couple of days dedicated to exploring each of these striking feats of nature. 

Waterfalls_Oct2009-008
Taughannock Falls from inside the gorge.

Interesting fact I learned while reading roadside historical signs was that Louis XVIII of France, while in exile, sketched the She-Qua-Ga Falls.  The sketch now resides in the Louvre Museum in Paris.
Waterfalls_Oct2009-015She-Qua-Ga Falls (Montour Falls) photographed with a Nikon 10.5 Fisheye Lens

To get that "smooth and silky" look in your waterfall photography, you must conquer the exposure by slowing down your shutter speed to a couple of seconds or more.  Start by setting the lowest possible ISO your camera allows.  Then stop your aperture down around f/22 to restrict the light even more.  Unfortunately, even with an overcast sky, you might still have too much light to slow down the shutter.  In this case you will need to use a neutral density (ND) filter to reduce the light by a few more stops.  I like using a 0.9 ND which reduces light by 3 stops.  

Waterfalls_Oct2009-003
Eagle Cliff Falls in Havana Glen Park

The whole point is to slow down the water so it flows through the exposure.  The surrounding stationary surfaces remain sharp.  Of course, the only way of achieving this is through the use of a tripod.  And don't forget, when utilizing a tripod, to shut off any image stabilization or you could wind up with blurry images.

*** Next Photowalk - Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum ***
Sunday, October 25, 2009 at 10:00 AM
Sign-up Here


-30-

 

Labels: , , , , , , , , ,

0 comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)
 

Need a Professional Photographer - Hire Me