The sky was pretty clear, and it looked to be a pretty good day to try some winter pictures at the Rawdon waterfalls. Picked up Nick and we headed up north. Half way there, we hit a snow squall, and I got a little worried. Not 15 minutes later, we pulled out of it and there were bright blue skies with fluffy white clouds.
We arrived about an hour before sunset, so we didn’t have as much time as I would have liked. I set up using my kit lens as it was the widest I had, but I was also excited to use my 50mm f1.8. I really wanted to play with the limited depth of field an f1.8 will give you. There are about 4 key locations to take pictures at the falls. A slight birds-eye view, a level view from the front, upstream and downstream.
The sky was pretty blue, and would have loved a little more depth. The sun was starting to set, so the forest was starting to get a little flat and blue. The falls were spectacular. The sides were all iced up, and the river banks had a great winding path cut out by the running river. Before the sun went down, we were able to hit all vantage points. I tried to keep the ‘end of day’ feel in the images with ‘Down Stream‘ really keep with the feeling the time of day was projecting. I also got a great picture up stream of the sky reflecting in the rushing water.
I was a little worried about the mist, since the last time I was there it was pretty nasty. It really wasn’t an issue at all, and probably had something to do with the ice formations. I assume it will be a completely different story when I return in the spring & summer to get the effects of the different seasons.
The 1.8 did pretty well. I was hoping for a few more interesting subjects to focus on but there wasn’t much that really stood out. A few pictures did well with the limited depth of field and are listed below. I am really starting to see issues with Chromatic Aberration. I have seen it before in a few of my images, and it is the next thing I really have to research. I also really have to get back into improving my technique and understanding some of these issues. Time to open up the books again and start a’reading.
A Few Comments from the Shoot:
- Need to dive deeper into Chromatic Aberration.
- Need to understand some of the technical issues and the ways around them.
- Interesting how the seasons effect the feeling and effects of locations.
- My GND filters didn’t come out, and they probably should have.
Images from the Shoot:
