Punchbowl Falls

[dankearl]

One of the most photographed falls in the Columbia River Gorge, Oregon.
An icon of sorts here although it is a couple of miles hike to get to.
Very difficult photography, you need to stand in the river and shoot an extremely bright falls
in a dark shaded canyon.
It looks so good on the back of the camera until you get home......
Taken at 3 pm, enough sun in the upper canyon to give light and reflection off the canyon walls.

1.6 sec., f16, iso100, 32mm (nikkor 18-105mm lens), D7000, tripod in the river.

DSC_2932bp.jpg (http://www.birdphotographers.net/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=131432&stc=1&d=1376449864)

[Lyle Gruby]

Beautiful scene. I don't ever seem to get tired of seeing this waterfall. Looks like you handled the light very well. Those highlights can really get away from you when shooting a waterfall with dark surrounding forest. I love the different color vertical lines throughout.

[Mark Dumbleton]

Lovely dynamic image. Contrasts in light handled well. Love the colours!

[Andrew McLachlan]

131473

Hi Dan, A lovely scene and as you mention a very often photographed waterfall however, it is one I never tire of seeing. I really like the central placement of the cascade here and the gorge walls are providing the needed symmetrical balance for the centered cascade. Lovely.

In my repost I made a few minor tweaks in Viveza 2. I lightened the rock wall on the left a touch and added a little punch to it with the Structure slider...reduced the brightness of the trees on the right side a little bit...desaturated the rocks around the cascade just a bit and increased the Structure slider too...I also placed a control point on the foreground water and moved the Structure slider to the right to try and emphasize the rocks on the riverbed a little bit.

WDYT?

[dankearl]

Andrew, thanks for taking the time.
I immediately noticed the river rocks, a big improvement and the lightening looks good also.
I have to bring everything up in these shots, they are basically underexposed by about a stop to keep the water in control
and don't really know where to stop bringing up the exposure.
I don't use anything but NX2 for PP, but it has a spot feature where you can select an area and do everything (exposure, contrast, color balance, etc.)
in one process. So I basically work each area separately to get the photo I want. I should have lightened the wall more as you did.
Thanks.

[Morkel Erasmus]

Lovely scene that draws the viewer deep into the falls.
I like what Andrew did (more vibrance/luminance). The brightness of the water is borderline, but as you said so tough to control in these situations.
Thanks for letting us know what your PP software of choice is. Often we tend to make suggestions based on PS and forget people use all kinds of packages. :e3

Dan, do you shoot some landscapes with your D800 now? The dynamic range of that sensor is killer, really helps when wanting to bring up some shadow detail...

[dankearl]

Thanks, Morkel
I use the D800 with 70-200 landscape photo's ( haven't really posted one of those) , but my wide angle lens
are DX, so i use the D7000 which is not a bad camera at all.
In DX mode it has more pixels than the D800 and I don't like to compose landscape photos with the D800 with DX lens
with a box in the middle of the view finder.
I need to get a nice FF wide angle, not sure if I want to pay for the 14-24 Nikon right now, i am looking at Tokina or
maybe the 16-36 Nikon.

[Morkel Erasmus]

Makes sense, Dan. I did love my D7000, wish I could have kept it as a DX on-hand body, but had to sell it to fund my D800.

[Anette Mossbacher]

Hi Dan,

wonderful scene and waterfall. Not much to add here for me, the others addressed already everything. :bg3:

Have a great weekend

Ciao
Anette