At 94’ Ganoga Falls is the tallest waterfall in Ricketts Glen SP in PA. For the sake of honesty I did clone out one very intrusive limb which I could not get rid of by moving the camera around. This is a little different take on the way I have shot the falls before. In the past I have shot at 17 mm, but decided to zoom in just a little bit to 30 mm.
I appreciate your taking a look and leaving a comment or suggestion.
What technical feedback would you like if any?
All C&C welcome
What artistic feedback would you like if any?
All C&C welcome
Any pertinent technical details:
Nikon D700, Nikon 17-35 @ 30 mm, f 18 @ 0.4 sec, ISO 400, CPL, cable release & tripod
You may only download this image to demonstrate post-processing techniques.
Beautiful image Ed - what a gorgeous combo of the lovely cascade, autumn foliage and even some geology thrown in. One might think they were in heaven visiting this place…
I really hesitate to suggest this because everything in the frame adds to the beauty. But I’m going to suggest a crop anyway. The comp feels ever so slightly with the cascade pushed slightly to the right and there’s a minor sense of the eye leaving the frame as the water flows out of the bottom corner. Not sure if this would be an improvement or not, but cropping off the bottom so that all the water exits the bottom and none from the right creates a slightly better balance (to my eye anyway.) The down side is I don’t like losing the leaves and rock LL.
Given your description of the “tallest waterfall”, I’m thinking including the full length was important. So not sure if a crop suits your vision or not. No matter, it’s a beautiful scene. Great job on the processing as well.
This is very pretty, Ed. I like the inclusion of those ribbons of falling water on the left hand side. Processing looks spot on to me. I see what others are saying about a crop from the bottom… but I’m not sure. I think I like the framing as-is.
Kudos on choosing a good shutter speed. The effect on the water is excellent. I like the line created by the falls all the way up to the colorful leaves top left. I would be tempted to bring out a little more of the color in those leaves and perhaps brighten them a bit. Also, a light touch using a gradient filter slanting down from top right and slanting up from bottom left would also make those corners less distracting and have the eye drawn more to the beautiful shapes and lines in the falls. An alternate is to delicately use dodge and burn tools.
Ed, really nice waterfall scene, there are lots of interesting things to engage the viewer here. I love all of the fallen leaves on the rocks, and the shutter speed is perfect for the volume of water. Compared to your other recent Ricketts Glen images the whites look more neutral here, so I think the color balance looks spot on to me. I wouldn’t change the crop, I like it as presented.
I like the scene and the diagonal flow of the water. This feels excessively warm in tone to me. Might be intentional, but could see experimenting with a cooler tone also.
@Lon_Overacker and @Dan_Kearl : Here is a repost with a crop from the bottom. @Rick_Alway : I darkened the two upper corners a bit and lightened the fallen leaves a little. @Tony_Kuyper : Does the whole scene look to warm to you or just certain areas? Just wondering because I am not seeing this as excessively warm. My last two posts from Ricketts Glen were so I tried to keep the water more neutral.
Yes, the whole scene looks a little warm to me. The water does look neutral here, but why not let it go a little blue? I played around with a Cooling Filter (80) in PS with some masks and came up with the image below. The water has a slight coolness and the rest of the scene is less yellow. But this is just to illustrate my comment. Given the fall foliage, maybe the warmth is warranted.
