426 - Cascada Los Azules
Our first waterfall in Mexico did not disappoint. AT ALL. Today's shoot was at Cascades Los Azules, which means the Blue Waterfalls in Spanish.
I'd just come off shooting at Fábrica La Rojeña, and Haley was ready to shoot this waterfall that was right down the road. Not going to lie, I was still pretty hungover from the night before, but I was in the mood to shoot still. Adventure photography was calling my name.
Plus, the hike was only 1.8 miles roundtrip, and was apparently right by our campsite. We didn't even have to move our van.
At first, it seemed like a fairly easy hike. But was we got further and further down the trail, we took more and more wrong turns. For some reason the AllTrails app kept leading us off cliffs, which is the first time I've ever had that experience from the app. Normally it's the perfect guide!
Luckily the trail wasn't too complicated, so we eventually arrived at a couple pools of blue water.. Well, now I know why the call it the Blue Waterfalls... the water was literally bright blue. It was extremely trippy. I wonder why it was like that. We were in the middle of a desert.
Either way, I needed a photo. I found this one tree right next to it to be the most interesting foreground:
“Puddle of the Witch”
Taken on Sony a7rIII + Tamron 17-28mm f/2.8
[ISO 1250 ~ 17mm ~ f/9 ~ 1/50s]
(Want a Print? Get one here.)
I don't think I've seen a tree with that many roots in my entire life, save the Tree of Life in Washington. It was insane... Almost reminded me of pipes or some kind of computer wiring. Not to mention it also provided a nice leading line for the pool. We followed the blue pools for about 500 feet, and we found the waterfall...
We were right on top of it, and the bottom was a couple hundred feet below us straight off a cliff. Great...
We backtracked a little ways, and eventually found a trail that seemed like it went down. We followed it, but it kept forking more and more. Eventually we just completely ignored the AllTrails app. Our strategy was to follow the worn rocks. When people climb over rocks enough, they get this smooth, almost shiny kind of edge to them. It was clearly a local's trail.
It wasn't too crazy- there was no way we could get lost on the way back, just slightly disoriented. So we risked it. The trail ended up taking us the right way, and within 20 minutes, we were at the base of the waterfall. Phew.
Now to get a shot of the waterfall... Debatably the difficult part. I knew from my experience shooting the Oregon waterfalls that I needed some type of special foreground, or else the shot would look extremely basic- no matter how well I edited it. That's just how it goes with waterfalls. Everyone can take a basic waterfall shot, so they need something special to stand out.
Here's what I ended up with:
“Swirly Q”
Taken on Sony a7rIII + Tamron 17-28mm f/2.8
[ISO 50 ~ 17mm ~ f/16 ~ 0.6s]
(Want a Print? Get one here.)
Even though the photo looks severely unbalanced, I feel like it's got something interesting going for it. You don't see many waterfalls with a double pool right in front of it, and I liked the spinning pool of water in the bottom one.
And with that... we called it a day! Trail hunting 101 today... Another Mexico lesson I'm learning.
Alright... BYE!
I’m on a mission to explore as much as humanely possible.
Want to see my progress? Check out the Adventure Map.
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