From one of the most diverse and truly epic geological regions on earth to photograph, the great Pacific Northwest (where I was very blessed to be raised by an outdoorsman and mountaineer). Even with the catastrophic forest fire in the Columbia River Gorge (Oregon) this last summer, still, over 200 major waterfalls are to be had just on the Oregon side alone! Now living in Florida, the anticipation of my spring season (May) is starting to get me very excited. I'll see some of you out there.
Sony A7R2
Canon 16-35L2@33mm
f/14
0.4
ISO 50 (expansion low - for better print quality)
Circular Polarizer
Manual Cable Release (the $30 one from China)
Some Technicals for techies or for those craving photo knowledge:
I shot this last year during the peak of fall just after my group left and one person remained with me for an extra 5 days. Super care must be taken to get to this position and because I have done it so many times over the last 16 years I was able to get my companion here without any trouble, though he tells me it was memorable! These images are quite deceiving in that this place is roaring loud and this water is totally violent. 3 extreme Kayakers went over the falls while my client was shooting which was exhilarating to watch! This place is very dangerous to Kayak over even for the advanced extremists, and I know people have died here doing so.
The main thing here is keeping your lens dry from the constant mist. I usually teach a dual cloth system (or something of the sort using a hat or other object). One very dry cloth (that gets replaced quite often with more, so as to stay very dry) and one (less dry) cloth to put over the lens. Then you lift and shoot then drop the less dry cloth and use it to block the lens at the same time you dry the lens with the dry cloth again. I like having a ziplock bag full of endless quality lens wipe cloths. Sometimes this is done in the rain, under an umbrella, which gets even more challenging.
After trying a combination of shutter speeds, we find our favorite for textures relying on the LCD as our feedback. Then we simply shoot tons of images (because the water is always changing). In Photoshop as layers, I pull them ALL up at the same luminosity and choose my favorite for atmospheric conditions, light and water texture. Then I go back to Raw and get to work.
Most work here was done in Lightroom Raw, and then in 32-bit RAW Photoshop "Smart Objects" (layers and many other finesse tools now in Photoshop supporting 32 bit Raw!) in BETA RGB (as opposed to ProPhoto or any other RGB space) a color space that is ultra wide but has far less synthetic colors (colors the eye cannot ever see and can often cause serious rending problems especially in Fine Art Master Printing when remapped into a viewable/printable color). As opposed to my Video Tutorial "The Ultimate Sharpening Workflow For Fine Art Printing" I am now usually not capture sharpening my master file at the Raw stage. Most often I will now do this to the TIFF just before the upsize using the Camera Raw Filter (Sharpening Tab) in Photoshop instead. The full reason is too lengthy to explain here. But it has to do with HUGE prints, like 60" or larger. Basically, our master files can too easily create unfixable artifacting in the image. Also, capture sharpening to a TIFF does the exact same thing visually to the pixels (it enhances and draws out the overall quality of the detailed areas for enlargement). So the importance of masterful Capture Sharpening is still critical for the very best potential detail in an enlargement. The larger you print the more important it becomes...
Some very basic masks were employed in Photoshop to the RAW "Smart Objects" (Water, Land...) and very subtle and careful fine-tuning to the local areas... we can now do this to the lossless Raw 32 bit file in Photoshop but with much more finesse than any Raw converter allows today. I believe this is the beginning of the future of post-processing. Unprecedented lossless adjusting and quality.
After finishing I still use Photoshops "Save For Web" for the conversion to Web Srgb, and to embed the Srgb file (so that browsers can interpret the image more accurately) and to save as a JPEG for web viewing.
But, just before this I downsize using Photoshops "Bicubic" ("for smooth gradients" - the best for downsizing) and then use the Camera Raw Filter in Photoshop / Filters (Radius to the Left, Detail to the Right and 0 mask for the finest deconvolution sharpening) as a layer and selectively (less for water or skies) work the image using masks.
The images for Fred Miranda, I make an 83, 83, 83 gray Photoshop canvas/background to do the final color and tonal tweaks (of course on a color calibrated monitor at 2.2 Gamma, 6500 White Point and 125 brightness/candelas). All my images get worked on a white background for the web first, before the conversions for web viewing.
Nice capture of Spirit Falls. It's on my list just have not been there yet. But now this talk about 32-bit Smart Objects and BETA RGB - I just don't know. Dave
Hey, when you go to 16 bit from 32 bit, I assume you don't flatten, otherwise Photoshop makes you go through the RAW converter to get to 16bit again...
I wish 32bit had curves adjustment layers.
Fantastic work of this beautiful waterfalls. Particular love the details of the flow. Is the bluish green tint of water in the river there as it is? It's always amazing to me.
Thanks everyone for taking time to comment! I appreciate it! I'll get to the messages as soon as I can.
Matt Anderson wrote:
Love the vertical here!
Everything - perfection.
Hey, when you go to 16 bit from 32 bit, I assume you don't flatten, otherwise Photoshop makes you go through the RAW converter to get to 16bit again...
I wish 32bit had curves adjustment layers.
After exhausting the Smart Object workflow as much as possible I will either rasterize the layers or flatten (sometimes saving as a different file so I still have the Smart Objects file in Layers). Often I will still bring in ACR versions for certain things. But all in all this minimizes the 16 bit adjusting to much less adjusting/degrading, allowing much better data in the image.
Excellent image! And thanks for the technical background.
In terms of image capture, what white balance setting are you using?
I was using WB 'cloudy' on a Canon 5D Mark 3 while shooting a local creek.
It resulted in an unnatural looking yellowish color in the water which proved difficult to correct
in post processing.
Excellent image! And thanks for the technical background.
In terms of image capture, what white balance setting are you using?
I was using WB 'cloudy' on a Canon 5D Mark 3 while shooting a local creek.
It resulted in an unnatural looking yellowish color in the water which proved difficult to correct
in post processing.
Thanks,
Arjen
Thank you very much Arjen. My pleasure.
The choice of White Balance in camera has absolutely no effect whatsoever on a Raw file. All it does is set up the instructions (metadata - "data about data" - to send to the Raw converter) for the Raw Converter (Lightroom / Camera Raw...) as to where the sliders should start out to best mimic the jpeg representation you saw on the back of your LCD. So I just use "auto" in most cases unless shooting stars. Sometimes I like a bluish feedback on the back of my camera for stars.
Then in Lightroom or Camera Raw I get it globally correct there (working with both White Balance Sliders) as well as overall Color Balance (meaning not only Blue to Yellow and Green to Majenta balance but also Cyan to Red)! This can be done in a number of ways including Curves using the Red Channel.
Once the image is globally color correct, later in Photoshop RAW "Smart Objects" I can work on subtle Local imbalances in areas with various masking techniques, yet remain in 32 bit lossless Raw in Photoshop. This is all just the tip of the iceberg...
If you want more information, let me know. I teach this stuff for my living...
Dave