370 - Abiqua Falls
*Note: This adventure also features an in-field vlog.
Oh Abiqua Falls... What will I ever do with you?
Today's shoot was at -you guessed it- Abiqua Falls in Oregon. And I was sufficiently not amped for this shoot. Not because of the location, though. It looked like an absolutely gorgeous waterfall on screen. However, I'd been shooting the last SEVEN DAYS IN A ROW- and I didn't even realize it.
I *really* need to keep my days off in check, or else days like today happen. Where I wake up completely exhausted with little to no creative energy AT ALL.
Obviously I went to adventure anyway, because the location looked so epic. And it was only a .7 mile round trip hike. We spent the night down the road from the trailhead (as far as our camper van could make it...) and it probably ended up being about a 1.5 mile hike roundtrip.
On the way to the waterfall, there were actually a lot of fun shenanigans. There's a whole rope system because the trail down is fairly steep, and then you walk next to an absolutely gorgeous river for the rest of the way.
Upon arriving at the waterfall, I was absolutely wow'd by the rock textures all over the walls. They had so much depth and dimension it straight up BLEW my mind. It looked like an exhibit at Meow Wolf...
I snagged a shot of a textured rock right off the bat:
A few minutes after we got there, we heard some others driving in and assumed it was more photographers. No other person in their sane mind drives to the middle of nowhere to hit a short waterfall at 7AM. We were right- two local photographers showed up, Bob Williams and Ulrich Buckhalter. Never met them before, but it was nice to talk shop to REAL photographers, not just randos that decided to pick up a camera that day. These guys were legit.
From that point on I felt IN THE MOOD to shoot. My creative juices began to recharged, and I took control of the moment.
I snuck around and did some warm up shots, and felt obligated to get fancy. When there's other photographers around I get competitive sometimes. It's strange. I snagged one shot that I didn't love, but it was good practice none-the-less. It's in the vlog if you want to see it. Not good enough to be "an official adventure shot" so I won't include it here, but it was a nice warm up, and I've thought about including exclusive warm up shots in the vlog to showcase the process more.
Eventually I landed on a moody, straight on shot of the waterfall. I found a colorful fall leaf laying around, and laid it upon a nice rock foreground. Check this shot out:
Now, I'm not afraid to say I went IN on the editing with that one. Maybe it was the overcast of the morning, or the fact that I was burnt out, but I was really going for a DARK shot. Overdone? Maybe. But it's how I felt, so middle fingers up, baby.
And... That was the whole shoot. We somehow spent 2 hours down there messing around with compositions, but that's the only shot of it I really liked. If you walk back a little ways down the river, you can get some pretty neat reflection shots of the waterfall because the water's so slow.
I'd probably get a shot there if I came back, but like I said, it was a long week for me so I didn't nail anything. Oh well. Still had a blast- that's the thing about photography. Even the off days are great.
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.
