Wahclella Falls

I have to give serious credit to fellow NPN’er Mark Metternich. I recently did a 1 week, pedal to the metal private Oregon Tour/Workshop (“The Pearls of Oregon” – Spring) with him that was a complete life changer for me! Mark is the real deal! We tirelessly chased dramatic landscapes all over the unbelievably beautiful state of Oregon and I learned more than I can ever begin to put to words. I’ll put it this way: there was my landscape work before the trip, and there is my landscape work after the trip! I even got “pic of the week” for my photo “A Perfect Morning“ here on the landscape forum a few weeks ago (largely due to skills in both Photography and Photoshop I got to hone in). I have to say I have never met anyone so passionate about not only experiencing and photographing landscape, but also about teaching it as well! Mark is a very gifted and personable teacher and is great at taking challenging, difficult concepts and making them understandable in a real world applicable manner. I think he is truly in his element leading, guiding, inspiring and teaching. I will never see landscape, travel, photography, Photoshop nor this wonderful privilege we have as photographers the same again.

About the image:
Wahclella Falls (Columbia River Gorge) at both peak water levels and early June spring color.
Nikon D300S
Nikon 12-24@13mm
f/8
46 and 61 second exposure
ISO 200
Circular polarizer and 10 stop ND

Simple 2 shot blend.
1 exposure for everything (46 seconds). The other (60 seconds) I fogged the lens by breathing on it the last 1/3 of the 60 second exposure to diffuse the highlights just a little. That image was brought in to PS as a layer at 5% opacity, over the original, but only using the highest highlights, falling off the middle tones and shadows (simply using “blend if” – in Photoshop). Adobe Camera Raw work was minimal.

Thanks for looking!