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View Full Version : One of many falls in Jiuzhaigou NP Sichuan, China



Douglas Bolt
08-19-2008, 07:01 PM
Canon 30D, 24x015 @24, f22, 1 sec, -.67, ISO 100, ff, tripod, Singh Ray CP.

There seemed to be miles of these beautiful falls through out the park. I understand there is only one other place on the planet where water falls from level surfaces like this. Usually, flowing water erodes away a grove in the underlying soil or rock. However, here, the water is saturated with calcium carbonate from the limestone in the mountains above. When the saturated ground water becomes agitated by the falls, it releases C02, which causes the calcium carbonate to precipitate and thus conteracts the normal process of erosion. Or, so I was told by a geologist friend. Anyway, it was a spectacular park.

PP consisted of Threshold setting RGB black (10) and white points (245) for color correction, screen blending mode to open up some of the shadows, a little dodging and burning on the flowers, medium curves for punch, increased saturation on the magenta flowers, increased saturation of yellow to brighten the leaves and a little selective sharpening followed by output sharpening.

Johannes Glännman
08-20-2008, 05:00 AM
I think it is very wellexposed. Personally I often have a very hard time trying to do waterfalls in daylight because I very often get either overexposed or underexposed pictures or that part of the picture is it.

I think you manage it very good and the picture almost looks like someone paint it.

I do think that the light is a bit strong. It would be better for the flowers in the FG to have a more smooth light because now they look a bit hard and the details is getting lost...

Cheers // Johannes

Dave Mills
08-20-2008, 09:07 AM
I feel the image is well composed. Usually when you shoot a scene like this you would prefer even light without the highs and lows.
I think you did the best you could based on the exposure difficulties.

Bruce Murden
08-20-2008, 04:16 PM
Unless you had a 100 meter diffuser and chose not to use it, you made a good comp with the shadows and sunlight. I can only imagine that it was very difficult to decide how to frame these falls. I'd love a pano of such a string of falls, but I would think the trees above would overwhelm the falls as they tail off in the distance, so I think you chose a good compromise. You tell a good story with the image that the falls go on and on, and the geology lesson in the text just adds to this image!

Roman Kurywczak
08-20-2008, 06:32 PM
Hi Douglas,
Tough exposure as mentioned above but you handled it well. This would have been off the charts if you had a nice overcast day. Well composed.........I like the balance the diagonal comp brings to the image.

Gus Cobos
08-20-2008, 07:30 PM
This composition is well exposed. I like the flowing creamy water, it looks like a painting...:cool:

Robert Amoruso
08-21-2008, 10:50 AM
Doug,

This is a very beautiful location and you did extremely well with the high contrast and the filtered lighting.

I did a repost looking to lower the contrast.

I first did a curves adjustment with a reverse "S" curve to lower contrast but also wanted to lower the highlights more so....

I hit Control + Alt + ~ (tilde) and to select the Highlights.

Then I hit Control + J to make a new layer.

Then I set that layer to blend mode to multiply.

Then on this layer, I opened its Layer Styles and did a Blend If adjustment where I moved up the shadows markers on both this layer and underlying layer to 230. This limits the multiply affect to the highlights about 230 to 255.

Douglas Bolt
08-21-2008, 11:13 AM
Thanks, Robert. I LIKE it! Subtle, but big improvement. I have a copy that is much darker than the one I posted here hanging in our living room. I'll be replacing it with something more like the one you posted above.

I really appreciate that you took the time to not only repost, but to explain how you got to where you did. Very helpful.

Thanks too to the others who made helpful suggestions.

Oh, regarding the other place where similar waterfalls can be found (I could not recall the name before), it's Plitvice Waterfalls near Plitvicka Jezera, Croatia. Never been there, but pics on the Internet look outstanding.