Watkins Glen Long Exposure HDR

In the beginning of August, my family took a trip to the Finger Lakes. That included a hike through the Gorge Trail of Watkins Glen State Park. We had taken this trail when our kid was 10 months old, so she was in the Baby Bjorn. I didn't have a nice travel tripod at that time, and had thought about how cool it would be to do some long exposure shots of the waterfalls. I have since obtained the Joby GorillaPod travel tripod for my dSLR, and made sure it was packed. What I didn't take with me on the hike was a polarizer filter, to cut down on the light reflections off of the water, leaves, and rocks. 

My family was constantly waiting for me up ahead, as I was stopping to frame a shot, take a couple exposures, possibly reframe. A lot of the time was me just waiting for people to move out of the shot.

This water fall photograph is composed of three images blended into a High Dynamic Range image. The exposure times were 4 seconds, 8 seconds, and 15 seconds. After the image was combined, I also then create a layer of the 8 second exposure ontop of the HDR image, and erased everything but the waterfall. I wasn't happy with the way the waterfall looked in the HDR image, so the "normal" exposure shot was used. 

Watkins Glenn Waterfall Long Exposure HDR
Canon 5D Mark III, EF 24-105mm f/4, f/16, 4s + 8s + 15s, 320ISO, 105mm

Bash Bish Falls WAW

Last week, I took some time off from work after having an extremely busy start to June. We packed the car, strapped in the kid, and headed north from the City up the Taconic State Parkway. We were staying at Lake Taghkanic State Park in a camping spot secluded from the other campers that also had a hiking trail leading from the two campsites.

This was also our second time camping with our daughter, who turns four in August. She had been camping when she was 11 months old when we stayed in a cabin (no water or electricity) at Watkins Glenn. This time was tent camping. She loved almost every moment of the trip.

The photo in this post was taken down near the water at Bash Bish Falls in Massachusetts. We parked in New York State and walked to the falls. I had brought along an ND filter so I could get longer exposure times, but even with my aperture stopped down to its smallest setting, the longest exposure I could get before blowing out the highlights was less than 3 seconds.

I also had the spray of the falls to content with, so of the multiple exposure I took, only about 3 turned out alright. This shot is my favorite of those three.

Bash Bish Falls
Canon 60D, Tokina Pro DX-II 11-16mm f/2.8, f/22, 2sec, 100ISO, 15mm