Upper Proxy Falls is more tame than lower Proxy Falls (see previous post). Although smaller it is still very beautiful in the way the water flows off its mossy green rocks, definitely worth a visit. As a side note this particular waterfall helped inspired our trip to this Central Cascade region of Oregon. Windows 7 actually uses a photo from here as a desktop image which I researched and discovered to be Proxy Falls.
Nicely done. All 3 are great, so I am not sure that I can pick a favorite, though I think #1 would take that honor. In all of these it looks to me like you picked the perfect shutter speed. You have the motion of a longer shutter speed, but you didn't let it go so long that the water would lose detail. Very nice.
Dave, you probably recogonize #1 from Windows 7. They have a killer shot of Upper Proxy as a part of their landscape desktop background series.
Jim, the correct shutter is mostly dumb luck here and a bit of experience. Most waterfalls I shoot @ ~ .5 seconds. And for the majority I find this speed works out pretty well. But after visiting this land of hundreds of waterfalls including the Gorge (again) it became more glaringly obvious that faster, more eruptive falls needs shorter times. I think this became most clear after shooting the two other large waterfalls in this area - Sahalie and Koosah Falls. Here is one example from Koosah Falls in which a faster ss would have been much better:
Derek, I did recognize it from Windows, but I had read your explanation too!
On the shutter speed, I agree that faster rapids and waterfalls the fall far enough need a shorter shutter. It's further complicated by water flow that is very chaotic, without a steady pattern to create contrast. Those can become pure white quickly, even if not overexposed. But your shot of Koosah Fall illustrates the conundrum of that: had you used, say, 1/4 sec the rapids in the foreground would have been less than optimal.
One solution, many times, is to bracket exposures so that you get a shorter speed example to play with blending selectively where it is needed. You can put the shorter exposure in a layer group above the main exposure, and use a curves adjustment layer on just the group to lighten the darker exposure and also increase subtle contrast, so that when blended it adds texture to the areas that would otherwise be blank white.
FWIW, your shot, while from almost exactly the same spot, is better exposed and processed than the Microsoft version. Too bad you didn't also get a blooming rhodo!
Yeah, I was actually focused more on the river flowing below my feet than Koosah in the distance. I think your suggestion to use a blended exposure is a good idea. The other complication for this particular shot was that it was raining and I was standing on a super slippery, mossy log ~ 10 above the fast flowing river. It was amazing green all around. So I just setup the shot and shot pretty quickly before sliding off that slippery slope.
With regards to the first shot, yeah, no rhoddies yet at Proxy. I'm thinking they probably came ~ a couple of weeks ago. Its still a pretty intoxicating place to visit. There was an awesome hidden Rhododendron Garden at Belknap Hotsprings where we stayed.
