Latourell-Falls - Columbia-River-Gorge

My first opportunity to use an ND filter in the USA. The Columbia

River Gorge area is truly spectacular and was a highlight of my recent

visit to the West Coast.

Any crits or comments welcomed.

Matthew,  You are correct the Columbia River Gorge is spectacular.  So is the rest of Oregon too.  This is a nice composition and you have captured the falls well.  Your placement and angle is most effective.  Yet, the image suffers some from overexposure - in spite of the ND filter - in the sky and falls.  I got some recent critiques on water images of mine that helped me realize that the silky smooth water effect is not always the most effective.  What happens is that you loose detail in the water and blow out the highlights because of the slow exposure.  There is also a dirt spot about 2/3 of the way down the falls that should come off.  After all this, congratulations on a nice image.  I fussed with editing it some; you may not notice much difference.   Regards.  Larry  

Hi Larry,

Many thanks for your observations, opinions and advice. Blown highlights are indeed an issue with such high contrating scenery, perhaps I may have tried using the dark end of a 0.6 grad.  The actual cascade was solid white water apart from a trio of fingers as the water plummets off the cliff (as is captured on a straight 1/125th sec shot I took before setting up for ND filters) but I take your point regarding loss of water texture / character etc.

The spot in the cascade is actually a leaf projecting beyond the branch in front of the water stream, non the less it's a distraction and looks better when removed. I should have slowed down when i was editing this image - and proff viewed it before posting many thanks and much appreciated,

Matthew.

I like your composition here Matthew.  I live in Portland and consider the Gorge my backyard.  Isn't a great place!  You said you used a ND filter, but I'm not sure you really need to use one here.  One consequence of lengthening the exposure using a ND filter is the movement in the foliage, which is apparent in the LLHC of the image. 

I tend to do a lot of image blending with my Gorge waterfall images.  I do one exposure for everything but the water, then do another for just the water.  I use lots of different shutter speeds for the water and pick the one that I like most.  Avoiding the blown out highlights in the water is key and sometimes you end up using a fairly fast shutter speed in order to avoid the blown highlights.

I like this one a lot. You presented the subject very well, the composition couldn't be better.

Kind regards, Alex