Shooting the Shooter Part Four - Fall Creek

I’ve had a heck of a time getting Ann to even show me the equivalent image she made at the same time I’ve photographed her.  She’s way too modest, but since she stores her photos on a separate drive, I can’t just go onto her computer and find the equivalent images - they’re not there!This past weekend we decided to take a trip down to the North Umpqua River area to go photograph some more waterfalls.  We had scoped out up to 7 waterfalls to visit in 2 days, so we knew there was more than enough subject matter (and hiking distance) to keep us busy.  Before we headed down though, I told Ann that I would take some photos of her and that I didn’t care what her equivalent photos looked like - the blog needed her images to keep the Shooting the Shooter series on track.  Ann acquiesced, though reluctantly. 

So our first destination on day one was Fall Creek Falls, about 30 miles outside of Roseburg.

Oregon has a lot of gems for hikes, but this one is a real jewel!  I’ve hiked along several “Fall Creeks,” but none of them had as many small falls along the hike as this one, and none have a trail that provides great access points to so many of the mini-falls.   While we stopped at a couple of them for photographs before the main falls, we noted another dozen or so that we could have stopped at.  We both agreed that we need to come back to this place with the idea of spending the entire day here exploring.  It was that good. 

This photograph was taken at one of the spots that, while you couldn’t actually get down to the falls, you had a clear view point (if of course you were willing to work your way around a tree and stand on the edge of a fifteen-foot drop off.  I was amazed when, after I worked my way around and told Ann she had a fairly clear shot, she said she was game.  For once it was me standing aside to watch her edge herself, tripod and camera close to the edge of a cliff just to get a shot.  Now I know how she feels when I do it! 

The above photo was made with my iPhone . . . the first I’ve tried to post from it.  While it has the pixels, it doesn’t have the quality of the Fuji, so the phone may just be for posting on Facebook.  Anyway, as you can tell from the image below, Ann did a good job of getting a good photograph in difficult shooting conditions.

What I like most about this photograph is that it captures the wonder that we see almost every time we go on one of our hikes.  While the big waterfalls are impressive, these creek trails offer a sense of wonder each and every time we get out.  That’s why we keep going out - even if you don’t get any good photographs out of the day, it’s wonderful being outside.  

Still, some trails offer more wonders than others and Fall Creek off the North Umpqua is one of them.

Addendum:

I usually don’t change a post once it’s gone up, but this time it’s worth it because of why.  When Ann saw the original posting, she immediately concluded that her photograph had been over saturated and wasn’t “right.”  So she went back to rework the image, decreasing the saturation a bit generally and selectively using saturation to make parts of the image visually stronger.

I posted the original image because that’s what she sent me and she was the photographer.  Who am I to say it’s not quite right?  The point of the series is to see what her vision was at the time I photographed her.

The love of saturation is not new to digital camera.  People loved Kodachrome for the over saturated reds and yellows you’d get, under expose Ektachrome a bit (and/or use a polarizing filter) and your blues would be simply amazing, and scores of photographers will admit to their addiction to Velvia, a Fuji slide film.  Everything just got a bit worse with digital when all it takes is a push of a slider to really make colors shout (or should I say howl).  It’s a bit too easy to nudge that slider just a bit more to the right.  However, part of maturing as a photographer is to not get carried away with things like saturation, or sharpening (or with techniques like HDR or fisheye lenses) and, over time, to learn how the subtle use of these things can help make an image stronger, help guide a viewer’s eye through an image or simply to make an image seem like it did when you were there.

So Ann coming back and saying, “I think this one is better” shows part of the photographic process.  And her development!