Foto Friday: Finding waterfalls

I’m willing to bet that most photographers have their favorite things to photograph.

Maybe it’s people. Or nature. Or landscapes. Or architecture. Or sports. Or countless other things. Parents focus on their kids. Journalists focus on the news. Amateur photographers go with their interests.

I’m a sports guy. I love doing action photography and often had to pull double-duty when I worked at the newspaper, writing and taking photos. It’s my hope one day, I’ll be able to do some freelance photography again (though I need a better “sports” lens. One day).

But I have other things that I like to shoot, too.

I love kids photography because you never know what you’ll get. It’s a bonus that several close friends have kids who are some of the most photogenic kids you’ll ever meet. It makes it easy.

I’m a covered bridge nut, too. But with so few in new York, sometimes it can become repetitive.

Then there are waterfalls. Boy do I love waterfalls. Big, small, whatever. It’s helped me work on different types of techniques. But I hadn’t seen many waterfalls lately. And, well, this summer has been so dry, many are dried up.

A few weeks ago, a new geocache published not far from me. I’m not one to race out to be first to find anymore, but this one was close. And it was a nice day. So, I went for it.

The cache brought me to a wonderful area that I had known about, but never visited. It’s a set of waterfalls and the cache was close to it. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much water flowing. Even worse, I didn’t find the cache. I still snapped photos that day, just without the tripod, so I wasn’t able to get the silk look of the small amount of water flowing.

It rained that night and part of the next morning. Then the sun came out. That evening, I went back. But, I didn’t bring the camera. I just wanted to find this cache and explore a little. I found the cache and looked around a bit and knew that next time we got a good rain storm, I was coming back.

That happened this past week.

One day and night it unleashed. So, the next day, I headed back. I found a better way into this gorge and got exploring and set up for a few shots. With tripod — and other “lenses” in hand, I headed down in and spent about an hour there, checking things out and snapping photos. I think there might be a few more falls below where I was, but I couldn’t find anything that looked like a safe way down. And, being I was solo, I figured taking a big risk probably wasn’t too bright.

This time, I came prepared with things though.

Obviously, I had the tripod and a remote release, looking for the longer exposures. But I also carried my pinhole cap and the Diana lens. I wanted to see what kind of results I could get out of each of those.

Of course, the exposures for the pinhole needed to be much longer, which was kind of cool.

I did learn a few things this day — like the need for a neutral density filter. Using that will essentially knock the sun out of the equation and allow me to go with some longer exposures if needed. I don’t know what it would have done this day as it was pretty much cloudy out and I got decent exposures. Still, I found a cheaper set of filters, one of which is the ND. I’m going to grab those to see what I think about them. I don’t want to pay upward of 70 bucks or higher for an ND filter if I ended up not digging it, so I figure investing in one with a price more my style will give me a bit to see what I like.

Waterfalls really are fun to capture. It’s my hope I can continue to find them. I’m planning a trip to the Ithaca area this Sunday in hopes of finding a few good ones — after all Ithaca is Gorges. Alas, this summer drought has taken a lot of the water away. So I’m hoping the trip isn’t in vain. We’re likely doing a round of disc golf and we’ll find a few geocaches, so it’ll be worth it in that regard. But I’d really like a few waterfalls, too.

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