Kelsey Swanson
July 2025 - The Basin Waterfall in Franconia, New Hampshire USA
About the Image(s)
Description:
Nikon Z7 Nikkor 12-28mm
12mm ISO 320 f/8 2 seconds
10 stop ND filter used - I think
Tripod used
The water was so intense from recent rain that I had to minimize my long exposure and I took 3 exposures and HDR merged in Lightroom. I cropped in to minimize the dead space created by the water long exposure. I did global edits to lights, shadows, curves, color. I dodged and burned some of the trees and rocks to further emphasize the light and composition leading through to the background beyond the waterfall. I have another photo taken a little bit more to the left so the waterfall is more at a diagonal composition but the lighter tree area behind the waterfall gets covered by trees and is essentially dead space.
3 comments posted
I like your approach to this photo by merging 3 exposures. I like the dodging and burning of rocks and trees. This results in the beautiful flowing water over the rocks. I'd like to capture more detail in the area of greatest water flow. This is also the brightest part of the image and my eyes naturally go there. Maybe you could take another image at a shorter shutter speed to get more detail and then blend it into the photo. Maybe you could tone down the sky at the top? Or crop it out? Just ideas...You did well with a difficult subject matter.
Posted: 07/04/2025 07:31:25
Posted: 07/04/2025 07:31:25
I think HDR is a good choice for waterfall photography, which is always a difficult subject. However, for extremely violent water, you can also try stacking multiple 1-sec exposures instead of HDR to freeze more texture while keeping silky flow.
I think your post-processing is quite thoughtful - I like the details in the rocks and the trees. Posted: 07/09/2025 18:06:21
I think your post-processing is quite thoughtful - I like the details in the rocks and the trees. Posted: 07/09/2025 18:06:21
I think your blending is awesome, that is a skill that I hope to work on, some day...
I agree with Richard and Rizwan that the large blank waterfall in the foreground is too much, it is all I can see without really trying. I also find the bit of sky to be more distraction than asset. I tried cropping it out and reducing the amount of FG water, I feel this improves the overall mood of the image but there is still too much blank white waterfall in the FG. Anyway, see what you think.
As a Travel (PTD) image, I'm not sure this stands out enough to be competitive. There are a lot of waterfalls in forests, this is not distinctive enough to allow the viewer to immediately recognize the scene.
Lillian Posted: 07/09/2025 19:49:36
I agree with Richard and Rizwan that the large blank waterfall in the foreground is too much, it is all I can see without really trying. I also find the bit of sky to be more distraction than asset. I tried cropping it out and reducing the amount of FG water, I feel this improves the overall mood of the image but there is still too much blank white waterfall in the FG. Anyway, see what you think.
As a Travel (PTD) image, I'm not sure this stands out enough to be competitive. There are a lot of waterfalls in forests, this is not distinctive enough to allow the viewer to immediately recognize the scene.
Lillian Posted: 07/09/2025 19:49:36