Shooting the Shooter Part 10 - Upper Parker Falls

We headed back up the road that parallels Brice Creek for another set of falls clumped a few miles from the Upper Brice Creek Trailhead.  We found our new trailhead and headed up Brice Creek towards Parker Creek.  Surprisingly, we started climbing a bit again as we followed Brice Creek. And when we hit Parker Creek, we started climbing some more.  At one point Ann and I looked at each other and I said, “I thought this wasn’t going to be much of a climb!”  So I pulled out our iPhone maps . . .  yeah, we’re only supposed to cross 4 topo lines.  I then zoomed into the map to realize that each topo line represented 100’ of elevation change, not the 20' elevation change I was thinking.  Oops!  At that point, we just decided to gut it out despite the fact we were getting pooped (nice thing about the beach is that it’s flat!)

Unfortunately, there were no good photo points of Lower Parker Falls.  I guess the same could be said of Upper Parker Falls too.  Good views, but bad photo opportunities.  Despite that, Ann and I decided to go all the way to the top of Upper Parker Falls to see what was there - you never know.

There really wasn’t much to see, but once you’re somewhere (and really not looking forward to the hike back down) you drop the backpacks, pull out the cameras and see what you can see.  Ann went upstream a bit, where there were a bunch of rocks and downed trees.  I went downstream (again), but only so far.  In the photograph above, there’s a 35 foot drop about 5 feet to my right. 

While Ann was in the shadows, I was in the sunlight.  I started watching the water swiftly flowing over the moss-covered stone creek bed.  At first I wondered if it would make an interesting video, starting with the water by my feet, then following it as it shot off the end of the falls.  Then I became captivated with the sparkling light on the surface of the water and wondered what effects that could produce with a still photograph.  So I mounted the camera on the tripod, framed an image, and started experimenting with different shutter speeds.

This is the image that comes closest in time (approximately 40 seconds after - I was adjusting to a new composition at the time) to Ann’s picture.  How do I know this?  We’ve synchronized our camera clocks!

Unfortunately you still don’t have an image of Upper Parker Falls.