Brandywine Falls at Cuyahoga Park, Ohio

[Shindy]

I took several shots of the Brandywine Falls and I'm not particularly please with any of them. All suggestions on setting will be appeciated.



With these settings the surrounding landscape was quite Dark; some pp was used to get it to the photo you see.

Apt. 11
Shutter 2 sec.
ISO 100
18-135 lens @ 39mm
Auto Focus
Couldy but bright
Used a variable ND Filter set at Approx. 4
Tripod, but did not have my cable release with me.

[Tito87]

I'm thinking, this would look great in B&W.

[Krusty79]

Nice capture of the falls. I do find the vegetation in the foreground distracting, though. If you shot RAW or bracketed your shots, you could make one exposure for the water and one for the rest of the image and blend the exposures using a layer mask.

[Shindy]

Originally Posted by Krusty79

Nice capture of the falls. I do find the vegetation in the foreground distracting, though. If you shot RAW or bracketed your shots, you could make one exposure for the water and one for the rest of the image and blend the exposures using a layer mask.

Krusty' Thanks.
I agree that the vegetetion is a distraction, but this is the best I could get from the observation deck which overhangs a 50 ft. drop to the gorge. The suggestion of bracketing is a well taken and wish I had did that. Learning good photography is a never ending experienced.

[flytyer57]

Since you're from Iowa and this was taken in Ohio, I don't suppose you'll be going back for a re-shoot anytime soon and this is what you have to work with.

I don't know how dark the surrounding landscape was, but this seems too bright for me. I would definitely consider trying some vignetting around the falls to really emphasize them and try to disguise that railing in the lower right. You could also use this photo and do a multiplying layer copy and then erase out just the falls from that.

[Doug Sundseth]

Since you say you're unhappy with the results you got, I would vary the shutter speed (both up and down) to take a look at the appearance of the water. 8-10 seconds will look different than the 2 sec. shot here, and a 1/2 sec. shot will look different still.

As far as exposure, white water, like any white subject, will fool your camera's exposure meter. You need to add +1 - +2 stop exposure compensation to pull up the tones in the dark areas. If you like the water tones here, bracket (as earlier suggested) and composite the water from this exposure with the vegetation from a brighter exposure.

[Shindy]

Thank you all for your comments and suggestions. The next time I go to visit my daugther who lives there, I will re-shoot trying some bracketing, more shutter settings and some higher apertures. In the mean time I will try pp layering.

[KongeTorsk]

Cropping out the fence at the top would give this picture much more of a 'mysterious place in the woods' rather than 'tourist trap' if that is at all what you may be interested in.
Beautiful image. The rocks near the falls have interesting texture and color.

[milosh]

I think the whole image would benefit from adding some midtone contrast, just enough to remove that haze. Also, there is a heavy blue colour cast which could be easily removed in post-processing. That would make the water white and greens would pop a bit more.

As for composition, I find the wooden railing in the lower right corner distracting, but there's no way to crop it out and leave the waterfall intact. I suggest trying a different point of view if you have a chance.

[Shindy]

Originally Posted by milosh

I think the whole image would benefit from adding some midtone contrast, just enough to remove that haze. Also, there is a heavy blue colour cast which could be easily removed in post-processing. That would make the water white and greens would pop a bit more.

As for composition, I find the wooden railing in the lower right corner distracting, but there's no way to crop it out and leave the waterfall intact. I suggest trying a different point of view if you have a chance.

Milos;
I took your advise and did some more PP; remove the blue cast on the falls, a small crop on the right, cloned out the rest of the railing and added some more blue to the sky.

Thank you all for your inputs.