367 - Falls Creek Falls
Ever take your first shot then realize you're done for the day- you got everything you could ever want from the place? That's exactly what happened here at Falls Creek Falls.
Let's start from the start. I would use the word beginning but I don't know how to spell it. Well, fun fact. There's actually TWO Falls Creek Falls, one in Washington and one in Oregon. I bookmarked the Washington one on Google Maps, and saved the Oregon one on AllTrails. So when we showed up to the one in Washington, we were confused as hell.
No service was available, so we just started down the trail hoping it was the right one, and we didn't just show up to some rink-a-dink waterfall. This place was supposed to be an EPIC double waterfall.
I decided not to vlog this shoot as an experiment to see what would happen if I JUST focused on photography. Plus, we were running a bit late. The trail was only supposed to be 3 miles round trip, but we had no idea if this was the right one, or what was even going on. Did I mention it was sunset?
Needless to say, we hustled to the end, anxious of our fate. We even met some creepy old man biking the trail by himself. He had a strange vibe- I couldn't tell what was off, but it felt weird. Luckily he was old so I didn't feel too worried, but the whole way I was wondering if he was gonna setup some type of trap and murder us in the woods on the way back.
I watch too many horror flicks.
Finally we arrived at the end, and my anxiety was satisfied. We WERE at the right waterfall. And it was fucking insane. Like MONSTEROUS insane. You're strolling through seemingly normal woods, then all of a sudden you look up and see this massive waterfall coming out of a mountain. I didn't even the terrain got that high because there was so much tree cover. It was mind blowing.
I start to take in the scene, and realize the waterfall's in it's final moments of light. I had PLANNED on shooting it in the twilight, but I setup my camera to hit some shots anyway. I'd been used to shooting twilight waterfalls recently because the light is easier to control, and I figured this would go the same way.
Nope. My entire world view of waterfalls changed today.
My tripod was setup just right for a neat cut-off of the foreground dirt using rocks, so my camera was ready to rock when it the light hit. All of a sudden, the light bends the waterfall in a way that made it glisten so beautifully. The orange glow lit up the water, and the trees began to glow while the rocks down below hit that cool blue we all love.
I snagged this animal:
And from the moment I reviewed the shot in my playback, I knew it was perfect. Moments later, the light disappeared into the night and we were left with my original plan- the twilight shot. Which, mind you, I still got, but my original shot looked way better.
Obviously that image was focus stacked to oblivion (I think 5 times?) to achieve that level of sharpness perfection. But the edit wasn't hard at all. Just pulled the colors out more, cropped for symmetry, and fixed the blown out sky.
I realized I could just create a luminosity mask targeting the blown out parts, output it as a selection, then modify the selection to add 3 pixels. This gets rid of the artifacts left over, and left me with a clean sky I could reduce the brightness of and match the blue tones to the waterfall. Easy money.
Annnnnd that's today's shoot! Learned a lot about waterfalls- and I'm no longer just stuck in the Twilight Zone ;)
I’m on a mission to explore as much as humanely possible.
Want to see my progress? Check out the Adventure Map.
*Please note this page contains affiliate links.
