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Land of Waterfalls – r3

Land of Waterfalls – r2

The Land of Waterfalls known by some as Transylvania County lies in the western corner of North Carolina forming the crossroads of the Pisgah National Forest, Dupont State Park, Gorges State Park, Nantahala National Forest, and a good stretch of the Blue Ridge Parkway. Last November I spent a week wandering back roads and trails of this region on a determined if somewhat naive mission of capturing the power and beauty of the local waterfalls. I returned home to Charlotte with nearly 8GB’s of RAW images and a new found respect for just how elusive the perfect waterfall picture can be. Needless to say I had underestimated the challenges of waterfall photography and compounded the difficulties of my task by using this as the first field test of my new Nikon D700 and two new lenses. Why would I do it this way you ask. For the same reason that Superman crashes through the wall when there was a perfectly good door he could have used; because Superheroes like to do things the hard way.

OK back to the central tenant of my delusion of shooting the next National Geographic cover, the concept of shooting waterfalls just seemed so simple. Hike into the woods, set up your tripod, find an exposure that lets you close down the lens for greater depth of field and gives you a slow enough shutter speed to create a white water effect implying motion. If there’s too much light to get the right exposure just throw a 3 stop ND or a polarizing filter on the from of the lens, lock up the mirror, and trip the shutter with a cable release. A bit more involved then point and shoot but it’s not like were trying to split an atom either. Like many a rocket scientists I learned that …in theory practice and theory are the same, in practice they are not.

My grand theory of harnessing the raw power of nature through digital capture had a fatal flaw (well actually more then one, but we will get to that in a bit), it had failed to consider the extremes of dynamic range between a dark forest valley and a bright sunny sky. Graduated Neutral Density filter you say? Three stops or two, hard or soft? While I’ll take three soft if you please. Now if I had thought of this before my expedition I just might be hanging out with Scott Bourne on the next Aperture Nature Photo workshop (he shoot’s Nikon now you know), but alas I ventured into the great outdoors GNDless.

Oh my, a burned out sky. High Falls - The Triple Falls, Dupont State Forest

To be honest there were other technical issues (by technical issues I do mean operator error). I shot in either manual or Aperture Priority the entire week, which would have been the perfect option if I had only selected the right apertures. Stopping down the lens increases depth of field so why not stop down all the way to f22? I mean I knew that a lens needs to be stopped down from wide open to ensure sharpness, I just never fully reasoned out that stopping up to f16 or f18 might be a good idea.

Triple Falls close up, just before the bag for my RSS ball head started floating down stream

Triple Falls, another close up, ball head bag safely recovered.

Now our tale of photographic misadventure turns to composition. “How can I frame my shot with all these bushes in the way, come on, it’s November why are there still leaves in the trees!” Why is Mother Nature is dissing with me? Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of Phoshop. Then again how much can you really crop out of the foreground? Seriously though composition can present some challenges, in many cases isolating the waterfall from distractive elements may be tough, in others the realities of the surrounding landscape may mean simply being able to get into position for a good shot is not possible.

Pond Near Cove Creek Falls

My best shots probably came on my first day shooting the Triple Falls in Dupont State Forrest. The Triple drops about 100 feet over three closely spaced falls, which can be shot individually or together. A large watershed and plenty of flat rock make it relatively easy to get some good shots, particularly if you have a couple of GND’s to help keep the sky from blowing out. The falls are somewhat famous, having starred in Last of the Mohicans, and are fairly easy to get too so go early if you enjoy solitude.

Triple Falls, Dupont State Forest

 Cove Creek Falls in the Pisgah National Forest, which I shot on the second day, are a good example of how overgrowth can make getting a good shot difficult. The hike to the falls is significantly more difficult then the hike to the Triple Falls. That and its much smaller watershed mean there is a good chance you’ll have the falls to your self. I shot Cove Creek for about four hours and never ran into anyone else.

Cove Creek Falls.

As Kevin Adams states in his book North Carolina Waterfalls if you can only see one waterfall in NC then Whitewater Falls, part of the Nantahala State Forest, is the one. It is truly spectacular with two levels of shear drops and cascades plummeting over 400 feet. The falls can be viewed from two observation platforms with the lower one offering the best opportunities for photography. And there’s good reason not to stray from the observation platforms. These falls have claimed more lives than any other in the state.

Whitewater Falls

All in all I shot about 600 or so images of six of the areas waterfalls and while the results were far from perfect the insight I gained in what went wrong should prove valuable the next time around. With at least 90 something waterfalls to go in Transylvania Count, out of the 1,500 or so in NC, I’ll sure to be out that way again soon (packin Graduated ND filters to be sure).

I swear the rock was like that when I got there. Pool near Cove Creek Falls, Pisgah National Forest

Addendum – Don’t bother looking for rev 1 of this post. I originally wrote the post on Dec 25, on Dec 26 I went in to make a few changes and ended up rewriting the entire post.