Rifle Falls + Hike

[YossarianXXI]

Drove to the Mountains last weekend. Did a small hike, then continued on to Rifle Falls State Park. Took some shots I love

From the hike:

Z50_0204 by Yossarian_XXI, on Flickr

Then the evening before the "main shoot"so to speak

Z50_0228 by Yossarian_XXI, on Flickr


Some shots i like after sunrise

Z50_0301 by Yossarian_XXI, on Flickr

Z50_0295 by Yossarian_XXI, on Flickr


But I also made a couple mistakes. The first I know about: I misplaced my ND 2.4 filter which means i had to go with my ND ND1.2 which didn't give me the slower shutter speed i really wanted for some of the lit waterfall shots. I'll either have to find that or order a new one.

The other mistake i think I made; I think i did not use the timer/remote function well and on these frost shots manually pushed the button, inducing unnecessary blur. Kicking myself because i thought this shot would be one of my best and it's very blurry

Z50_0266 by Yossarian_XXI, on Flickr

[DanK]

Nice shots. I think the third is the most interesting, although I would crop a bit from the top and so some dodging and burning to cool the hot spots on the left and brighten the shadows on the right.

I don't know how you are shooting, but three of the photos have distinct color casts, and they aren't consistent. 1 and 4 have a substantial yellow cast. #2 is the opposite: using the waterfalls as a white, correcting it required a substantial shift both from blue to yellow and from green to magenta.

I'm not on a calibrated monitor at the moment, so I might have the colors a bit off, but here is what Adobe Camera Raw produced using the clouds and waterfalls as whites. I also opened up the shadows in the vista and added a little contrast with a curve. See whether you think these are moving in the right direction.

[pschlute]

I like the first, it has a painterly feel to it.

[Wavelength]

I too liked the first one very much; i think the silkiness of water falls are a bit too high, killing the original refreshing feeling that a water fall would induce

[billtils]

I'm with the general view of nice shots but the non-water one is my favourite of the set. Like Peter, I wondered if it had been processed to look that way,

[lovelife65]

These are all really nice shots. I agree with Bill, I like the first image (altho the tree has too close of a crop IMO) but also the last. I'm still on the fence on creating the different looks to water falls. The man overlooking the waterfall is a nice human element in the one photo.
Thanks for posting.

[YossarianXXI]

Apologies for just now getting to this, first of all, thank you all for commenting.

Dan - I usually shoot in auto white balance, and then just change in processing. The 1st is set to "Cloudy", The second is "Shade" and the third is custom (but closest to "Shade"). For the first one I like the yellow tint, it adds a warmth to the scene i like (it's closer to what I felt, imo).


All - As for the second shot... for the silkiness all I did was shoot with a NDF, and standard processing (dehaze, burn & dodge, etc). I was going for the silkiness, but it was all in the shot and not processing.

(The person in the 3rd one is me )