Latourel Falls

Copyright Nathan Montgomery, 2008

I've already posted one shot of Latourel Falls. To take this shot, I simply got into the stream and pointed the tripod towards the waterfall. If you're wondering, yes, it was cold. These streams are all formed from Mt. Hood snow melt.

I really, really like this shot. It's one of my favorite shots from the workshop. The instructor would regularly tell us, "You are responsible for the entire shot." Perhaps more than any other image, here, I think I managed to make sure that everything in the shot contributed to the picture.

The obvious feature is the waterfall itself. I like how tight it is. The stream is also very nice, and I like how this exposure lets you pick up the rock under the water in the lower left. But what makes this shot special in my opinion are three other features. First, the rocks in the foreground in the lower right. They are the reason I was willing to get into a mountain stream for the shot. Wet rocks look great in shots like these. Second, I love the ferns. The green really pops here. You can thank the polarizer for that (there's no glare from the wet rocks for the same reason). Finally, I love the detail on the rocks in the background. Particularly in the uncompressed, full-sized image (which is about a 30 megabyte file), you can zoom and really appreciate how beautiful those rocks were.

The shot was taken with the aperture set to F14, which gave me the long exposure (0.5 sec) that I needed in order to get the smooth waterfall and silky stream. I metered off of the ferns, and critically, I underexposed by 2/3 of a stop to add detail (and detail is key for this shot).

This is the last landscape or waterfall shot from my top 10 of the workshop. I still have one flower picture to post, and then I'll start to post second tier shots. If you don't mind, vote on the poll question to the right, which asks you which landscape or waterfall shot was your favorite. On Monday evening, I'll post the last flower shot and ask a similar question about those.