Hi everyone and welcome to today’s post. As most of you know I have been on a self imposed exploration of my regional backyard. I have cut back some of my trans-continental travel and taken the opportunity to visit some incredible local locations with one of my shooting pals Mark Muse. Today’s post is a real jewel and is located a mere 10 minutes from my office. Just downriver from where the Shenandoah and the Potomac join a small stream that drains from the mountains around Loudon Heights empties into the Potomac. But before it does the stream drops over a knife edge of stone and splinters into multiple cascades. On this day the falls were swollen with water from rains and snowmelt. The flow of water twists and turns through an obstacle course of large boulders before finally joining the Potomac River. Sometimes it just pays to stay at home.
Technical Details: I shot the falls in the early evening. The sun was already dropping low in the sky and the dense canopy of trees obscured most of the sunlight and gave me a beautiful even light for shooting. At this time even an ISO of 100 I could get 1/4 to 1/2 of second exposures which was plenty to give the water a frozen look. But I wanted a little more “flow” to the water and cut out some small specular highlights on the wet rocks so I used a Heliopan Warming Circular Polarizer which gave me an additional 3 stops. So my exposure data was ISO 100 at f11 for 4 seconds. Nikon D3x with a Nikkor 17-35 at 20mm.
Thanks for stopping by today.
Bob





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