I took a walk today, partly because I need the exercise, but also to see what the canyon that I usually hike up looks like since we got all that rain around Christmas time. The path was pretty eroded with some deep trenches. I say deep, maybe up to 24 inches. The creek that flows along the path was still running pretty full. In the summer months it is dry but we are having some snow melt and probably some leftover ground water from the rain still seeping out. I left the path and chose to walk up along the creek jumping from rock to rock. Nice to see the water running. Nice to see all the little things along the banks and in the water. The sun was just setting and not too much direct light reached the rippling pools and little falls. The grade is pretty steep and the bed of the creek was lined with rocks which made a bunch of little waterfalls, some up to about 30 inches. I’ve always wanted to get some great pictures of waterfalls but there didn’t seem like much here to photograph, no grand falls with mist and roaring. Just little trickles. Well I figured that I should at least practice a little with what I had. I wanted to do some of those long exposure shots where the water looked all silky and smooth. Even though the falls were little it should still have the same effect. Little did I realize how much alike they were. I probably took about 100 shots and found a few that appeared to be deceivingly larger than they really were. This one I call Granite Pool, seemed to have that effect more than most of the others.
I think it is because of the lack of anything in the shot that would give away the scale. There were no sticks or branches or objects that are of a known size. Rocks look like rocks. Small ones look just like larger ones.
I had trouble at first with making these shots right. I didn’t have a tripod so I had to set up a little rock platform to set the camera on. To get this type of shot a long exposure is required so that the water takes on that silky blur. Without a stable camera everything would have been blurry.
I wanted the low angle so I had to make my little stands precariously close to the water. (I kept my neck strap on the whole time.) Because the angle was so low and because I didn’t want to get all wet trying to look through the viewfinder I just guessed the approximate view. I held the camera up directly above the makeshift camera stand to get my focus (manually) then set it straight down. I often had to adjust the angle with little bits of rocks under the corners of the camera. Once I got the camera steady I tripped the shutter which was set using the 2 second delay. This way any movement caused by my hand would have ceased by the time the shutter went off.
One other issue created by long exposures is over-exposure. The aperture had to be closed to the smallest hole and I had a polarizer filter with me so I also put that on.
This took my shutter speed (which I let the camera figure out by using AV mode) to times of 5 to 10 seconds long. This can be done manually also but a little bit if trial and error are needed until you figure out the shutter speed.
After I got home and looked through my shots I found that only about 10 out of the hundred or so were any good. I liked what I saw in the colors and textures of the rocks and water. The orange tints in the stones, some green with light moss. The whites of the blurried water really defined the “flow” of the entire image.
These waterfalls will never become tourist attractions and surely will never be found on any map. Nonetheless I was so impressed with these little falls that I went ahead and named them. Some advice to any future hikers seeking out these falls, don’t expect to find Pine Falls or Granite Pool, just some small trickles in an ankle-deep Cool Creek.
