4-17 Pack Rat Falls

Daniel and I left Jessica and Grant in the car and made the short hike up the watershed at the back of the campground to Pack Rat Falls.  It was about 5:45 and the sun was going down behind us..

This is on the trail up the drainage.  I saw this big rock and still pool and decided to stop and shoot a few frames.  I love the see-through reflections.  (8 sec, f-14, ISO100)

Climbing up on the left side of the falls gave us a good perspective.  The color of the pool is exquisite.  (15 sec, f-13, ISO100)

Foreground interest and leading lines are a couple of the techniques I used here.  I probably should have used a tighter aperture to get better focus in the foreground, but this one works.  Even at this time of the day the sky through the trees was blown out.  I used the burn tool in Photoshop a lot here.  (5 sec, f-8, ISO100)

We climbed up on the right side as far as we could.  I liked this overhang and the perspective you get of the falls.(6 sec, f-16, ISO100)

This is a composite of four different pictures that I stitched together in Photoshop.  The only problem is you can see a break in the waterfall where the seam between pictures is.  Both of the above pictures were taken at the same zoom.  (1 sec, f-14, ISO100)

I used Photoshop a lot in these pictures.  I used a technique I read on Digital Photography School http://digital-photography-school.com/hdr-style-results-using-layers-in-photoshop that simulates an HDR process. I also used Photoshop's built in HDR method called Photomerge.  I shot bracketed exposures, then had Photoshop blend them for me.   The key to using techniques like this is to make your pictures look like they came right out of the camera the way you see them on the screen.  If you look closely at these pictures, you can see that I haven't achieved that yet.

Daniel and I got back to the car to find Jessica and Grant patiently waiting for us.  ;)