Elegant Elakala Falls, Blackwater Falls State Park, West Virginia

If you want to create an image like this you have to be willing to get wet and put your gear at risk. If you’re not putting your gear at risk of being destroyed, then you’re not going to be able to capture an angle such as this. Just purchase some equipment insurance and dive in. The light on this afternoon was exquisite! It was a clear day and the rocks were wet after raining all morning.

The extreme angle of view being this close to those foreground cascades and the extreme tonal values from bright water to dark rocks in shadow presented a few technical challenges. First and foremost, I wanted a long exposure to render the water as silky and soft. This was achieved by dialing in a 5 second exposure at F22 which also was the perfect setting for near to far sharpness with the camera literally only 2 feet from the foreground falls. With an exposure time of 5 seconds the water was perfectly exposed, but the shadow detail along the sides of the frame and on the rocks was about 1.5 stops too dark. To overcome this, I shot a second image at 13 seconds rendering just the perfect amount of detail in the rocks. The two images were later hand blended in Adobe Photoshop CS5.

Elegant Elakala

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