Saturday, September 27, 2025
Just like that, we are nearing the end of the journey. You might remember a couple of weeks ago that I mentioned something about going to Eastatoe Falls for the first time as part of the Waterfall Keepers of NC. This has been a subject that I have wanted to photograph since sometime around 2019 when I stumbled upon it during a visit to the area of Brevard to photograph some waterfalls. When I realized where I was at, I saw the signs that said that the waterfall was closed to visitors, and I had remembered reading that the property had been sold, and the new owners did not want folks on their property in order to see the waterfall. This was a bummer, but since I hadn’t gone out there for the express purpose of photographing Eastatoe Falls, I wasn’t really out anything. That was around six years ago, and in that time Kevin Adams helped to form the Waterfall Keepers of NC, and through that organization, one of the projects that they took on was to open Eastatoe up for viewing and photographing. They worked with the property owners and worked out an arrangement where members of the group could come on a day during the Spring and a day during the Fall.
Since I hadn’t been photographing that many waterfalls, I never did sign up to become a member of the Keepers, but after a workshop last year, Bill Neagle took it upon himself to sign me up for a membership and then signed me up to join him for the Fall session later in the year. I was finally going to get to see this waterfall up close and personal, but there was a little hiccup called Helene that kind of changed those plans. We ended up not going to see the falls at all last year which was totally understandable. There was one good thing that came from that experience and that was I continued my membership with the Keepers as I do appreciate what they do for the conservation efforts of these waterfalls.
When 2025 rolled around, I was looking for the date of the Fall session to try and get signed up for it. Bill beat me to it and before I even saw that the signup was open, he was emailing me to tell me that we were going for the 8am slot just as we had planned last year. I wasn’t quite as excited about going this year though because I had a lot going on with my portrait photography which was kind of keeping me busy. As of the time I was preparing to go to Brevard very early in the morning, I had two different studio sessions in the works, with the first one the following weekend. There were two other location shoots that were each an hour away from home, one of which was the weekend after the studio session. Each of these required planning and preparing. There was also my normal photography which was having to be slowed down to make room for the portrait work. The fact that I just haven’t been that involved with landscape photography through most of the year also weighed heavily on me. I had done a few landscape sessions during the course of the year and a few of them had been waterfalls, but nothing all that intense, or even that rewarding. Most of what I had been shooting fell into the decay realm of my subject matter which was where I was most happy.
All of this kind of affected my want to go three hours away just to photograph a single waterfall. Sure, it was something that I would not be able to access any other time, and it was a really pretty waterfall, but I was just not in the right frame of mind to fully take advantage of it like I would have wanted. The last thing that I wanted to do would be to go all that way and not do the waterfall justice. There was also the real possibility that I wouldn’t even get any decent photos because the weather was completely out of our control. It was like scheduling a workshop months in advance, only this time, it was my photos that were hanging in the balance, not the participants. This hit home personally.
Toni pushed for me to go and even suggested that I go a day early and stay in a hotel. That did make sense as it would keep me from waking up in time to leave the house before 5am. I’m not opposed to early mornings and have done them many times for photography as well as work reasons. The issue was a lot can happen on a three-hour road trip which could result in me missing out on the experience altogether. The more I thought about it, the more sense that it made to go Friday afternoon and possibly even get a few photos in and around Brevard just in case Eastatoe didn’t work out. Since Bill had signed me up, I felt I owed it to him to go, and I was very appreciative for the thought and the invite. He had mentioned going up early as well, so I invited him to share the hotel room with me so that we could simplify travel to the falls in the morning. He agreed, and with that I was set to get up to Brevard early on Friday.
I won’t rehash any more of the background of this trek, but I will say that the first evening that I spent in Brevard was less than stellar and really kind of got me concerned for how Saturday was going to go. When we woke up Saturday morning and checked the weather it was looking to be very promising, and the excitement started to build up. I was really hoping to get about five or six images from the waterfall to really make it worth the time invested. With good conditions and good waterflow, I was figuring that I could get a nice overall composition of the falls to show the environment, and I knew that there was a section at the lower right that I was interested in. That should be two shots in the bag right off the bat. From there, I would hopefully play with different foregrounds and angles to get a few more photos. If I got those five or six shots, I would consider that a win.
You will have to read the blogs to really believe what happened Saturday morning. I got those half-dozen keepers that I was after and then some. I think that the final count was 15 keepers from that one waterfall over the course of two hours. There were so many photos that I had to break it up into the first half and the second half of the morning. My feet and “toes” were soaked, but it was so worth it even before I was seeing the photos on anything bigger than the camera’s LCD. I had reconnected with nature and was feeling like I had a direct line of communication with Eastatoe Falls. I wasn’t wanting it to be over when our two hours were up. Now, I was pretty happy with what I had captured at that waterfall and wasn’t necessarily wanting to continue there, but I did want to do some more photography. I was hoping Bill would volunteer because he knew this area much better than I did and knew all the waterfalls.
Fortunately, Bill was looking for more as well and offered to take us to a few others that might provide good photos. I jumped at the chance and gave him full reign on where we ended up. Our next stop was Triple Falls which wasn’t too far away. We spent a couple of hours there as well, but the conditions were not quite as good. There were more people which made things a bit more difficult as well. It took me a while to figure out how to photograph the lower section of Triple Falls, but once I did, I started rattling off some really satisfying black and white abstracts. I ended up coming away with nine keepers from that location and that brought us to lunchtime. In fact, that was where we left off with the last blog entry.
Bill wanted to take me to his favorite restaurant which was the Cedar Mountain Cafe. I had no idea what kind of food was there, and he had said that it was pretty much anything that I could want. I checked out the menu and saw that they offered a Cuban sandwich. I have recently decided that I really love those sandwiches but can’t get them most places that I go. I wasn’t sure how it would taste from this little cafe, but I had to give it a try. Bill ordered the trout which was the first time he had tried that from the cafe. We were both experimenting with our food. In hindsight that might not have been the smartest thing to do since we were both around three hours from home and we had checked out of the hotel hours before. Oh well, if you will remember I spent a portion of the morning standing on a rocky ledge in ankle deep water just to get a photo with some leaves in it. I like to live dangerously….when Toni isn’t watching.
When the food came out Bill asked for some drawn butter and the waitress said that she could bring it right away. This was a term that I had never heard of before and asked Bill to confirm what he had said. Now that I was sure he was talking about drawn butter, I asked if he wanted butter drawn in Crayon on a piece of paper. He is an art teacher after all. He went on to explain that drawn butter was actually just melted butter. Having never heard that I asked where he had picked that up from and I wondered if the waitress understood. Bill was telling me that it was what he had always called it but didn’t know where it originated from. When the waitress returned to the table, she did exactly what I would have done and brought a bowl of individual butter packs still in their containers. That told me that she had never heard of drawn butter either. Bill explained what he meant, and she corrected the delivery of the butter with a bowl of melted butter for his trout.
So, there is the back story on the drawn butter and why I titled one of my photos with that same name. I had teased that I would name the whole blog “Drawn Butter (Part 1, etc…)” when it came time to write this out. That didn’t happen, but there was that one photo that looked like thin melted butter flowing over the rocks that just made sense to me. Now that we have that question cleared up from the last blog, I’ll go ahead and share that I really enjoyed my sandwich, though it wasn’t quite as good as what I can get at a Cuban restaurant, but that was to be expected. It satisfied my craving for one. Bill enjoyed his trout with drawn butter (melted butter for my Wilkes County folks), and we were still looking at dry conditions outside. There was even still a good deal of sun, though there were clouds coming into view at this point.
I was almost certain that Bill was going to call it a day when we got done eating, but he kind of hinted that he wanted to show me another couple of waterfalls in the area. I was getting tired and the adrenaline had worn off from earlier in the day, but I was all for hitting another waterfall or two before heading home. I mean, might as well make the trip worth it, right? I think he mentioned two different falls, but by this point my mind was starting to slow down so I don’t recall exactly. I do remember that we ended up going down a gravel road and he pointed out Merry Falls on the side of the road. Looking over my shoulder from the far side of the road, I wasn’t all that impressed with it, but Bill seemed interested and wanted to see how the waterflow was looking.
We got out of the truck and when I started to cross the road, I could finally make out that there were two waterfalls joining into one stream. In a way, it reminded me of Soco Falls which I had photographed many years ago. Both of the waterfalls had their own personalities and that was going to be a challenge to photograph. There was also no easy way to get in close to them. Bill did say that until recently, these falls were on private property and the only way to see them was from the road. These days, they are part of the forest service and are accessible to the public which is great. I wasn’t really convinced that there were any great photos to be had here, but the clouds were back, and the light was pretty good at the moment. We were here, might as well see if we could get anything. I think that was exactly what I told Bill when he asked if I wanted to shoot Merry Falls.
I was thinking that the best vantage point was going to be on the tip of the natural platform off of the road. It offered a clear shot of the falls, but that wasn’t where I went to start with. Bill went out there and started to work his compositions. For me, I was more interested in the vegetation that was between the viewing area and the falls. I would say that me from about two months ago would have avoided this shot totally, but I’ve started to come around to using vegetation in the foreground from time to time. Now, I don’t think I will ever get to that place that I have to have something blurred in the foreground in every photo, but I was thinking that it would be appropriate here.
I saw a similar shape to the vegetation along the bank that matched up to the base of the lower section of the falls to the left. I wanted to make the water loom large in the photo without including too much of the length because I still wanted the shapes to appear similar. The telephoto lens was the choice here to accomplish all of that, so that is what I fitted to the camera. I started to work out the positioning of the rig next to get the right scale and shapes that I wanted. It felt strange shooting a landscape with the aperture nearly wide open, but it was looking just like I wanted it to in the viewfinder. It was easy getting the right shutter speed with a lens that wasn’t stopped down so far. Fortunately, there was no breeze here and nothing was moving except for the water.
There were only two shots of this composition because I really wasn’t sure if it would work or not. I was really into the experimentation stage of the day because I knew that I had a bunch of keepers, I just didn’t know how many. At this point, I could afford to not go with the safe shots, and I could stretch myself creatively a bit instead. The real surprise here is that I do like this photo quite a bit. I even decided to add a little mystery in the far bank which was left quite dark compared to how I would normally process an image like this. It helped the leaves to stand out more, and it kept the eyes centered on the textures of the water which was what I had wanted to happen. For what I was aiming for, this was a very successful image. Now whether or not it is well received by you is another story entirely. Let me know what you think about it.
I had figured out how to photograph the waterfall to the left with that last photo, and now it was time to work with the right side waterfall. This one was more of a slide and drop which can be fun to photograph, but the slide portion usually ends up losing detail which I don’t really like. I tried a half second and a full second to see which I preferred. The drop fall really needed that fill second to show up like I wanted it to, and that was what I ended up going with in the end. I did a total of three exposures here with the first and second being a bit more open and the last cropping in closer to the drop to avoid the slide portion of the falls.
When I got the images back home and started to look at them, I liked the more open view as it gave more room for the falls to breathe as well as allowed more of the fallen leaves to be in the photo. It was the leaves that established the season and gave a nice splash of color to the scene. The most crucial part of the composition I thought was the lower edge. That was where the other cascade joined in with its partner. The converging flows provided an interesting triangle at the bottom of the frame which I liked, and it was a natural framing element. I think that is serves another purpose as well. It gives a more interesting element to look at when compared to the slide at the top. While the closer crop eliminated much of that waterslide, I liked having it there to lead the eyes to the drop. The eyes would then follow it down to the floor and then to the corner, but instead of leaving the frame, the eyes roll back to the left thanks to that framing water at the bottom. Then they pick up the colors and repeat the drop falls again to essentially go in a triangular tour of the photo with little time spent exploring the water slide as the orange leaves to the right of it pull the attention away on that visual return trip.
Knowing how the eyes read a scene is really important in photography, especially when creating compositions that have the potential to allow the eyes to leave out of the frame like this one did. By a careful consideration of the elements included and the positions within the frame, I can have a much better chance to control the path of the eyes through the frame. That is one of the hallmarks of a decent photographer I think, and after years of practice, I think I am pretty good at recognizing these potential pitfalls and coming up with corrections in time to include them in the composition.
I was starting to feel better about this waterfall now that I was pulling it apart and photographing it in isolations. This allowed me to tailor the exposure needs for the individual section that I as working with. So far, I had shot the lower half of the left side falls, and the majority of the right-side falls. There was also a section above them both which was a broad waterslide with a slight cascading section on the lower left of that section. There was no clear view of it as a tree was blocking the majority of it, at least from my viewpoint. Bill was still out on the edge working his compositions, so I wasn’t sure what that would bring when I got there. He did ask several times if I would like to step out there for a bit of a clearer view of the entire waterfall system. I assured him that I was good where I was at, and that was the truth.
Remembering that fallen tree at the top of Eastatoe Falls several hours before, I started to wonder what this tree would look like stretched across the moving water. It would be in direct opposition to that earlier concept which was all about an eerie feeling that bordered on spooky. This was not that kind of shot, if for no other reason than the tree was full of green leaves with only enough orange ones to indicate the season. This scene was full of life and color was as important here as the black and white had been with the other photo. The trick was going to be getting the shot to work with the lighting. The clouds were coming in and out with lots of bright light followed by more muted and soft light. I was actually seeing this as a well-lit scene with the tree backlit with the water very bright. The first frame was overcooked, and I blew out most of the water. The second frame happened just as the clouds covered the sun causing the light levels to drop drastically. I waited for one more moment of sunlight and when it came, I snapped that final frame of this composition and felt that I had the winning image with that last shot.
I didn’t see any real reason to stick this one out because I had what I wanted, and I wasn’t really convinced that the idea was going to work as a photo anyway. I picked the tripod up and started to look for that next photo which came from the left side waterfall that I had started out photographing. Before we get to that next composition, let’s rewind just a moment and let me share with you what happened during the culling and processing portion of the experience.
I ended up liking the third frame the best as expected, but it only made it through one round of culling before getting discarded. There was too much glare on the water due to the sun, and the tree wasn’t as vivid as I had hoped for. I didn’t bother with it until I was done with all of the preliminary edits and then I returned to those that I had tossed after the first culling. I again looked at this photo and decided that it just didn’t work. To be fair about the choice, I did bring it into the develop module and started to process it. In short order I could tell that it wasn’t going to work. Not another thought was given to it until I was about 2000 words into this blog entry.
As is getting to be the case with these involved treks, it is the blog that gets me reconsidering some of my discarded images. I was thinking through the organization of the blog and realized that every composition that I shot of this waterfall had made it through as a keeper save one. That was the one of the upper section of the waterfall. I had compositions of every other part of the waterfall but that one, and I thought that it would be a fun addition to the collection to include that one as well. I remembered that the exposure was off a good deal, and it was making the processing difficult, but now that I was nearing the end of the road for this trek, I wanted to spend a bit more time to see if I could make it work. Well, that is a bad way of putting it because I don’t “make” a photo work by processing choices. Whether or not a photo works is based on what I do in the field. The processing just amplifies whatever qualities the photo had to begin with.
I found the image among the one-star rejects and started to work through a different type of processing with it. The first thing I did was address the aspect ratio. The composition felt weak the way that it was, but I could see the shape that the frame needed to be. I changed things over to 16:9 and eliminated a good deal of the leaves at the top of the frame which changed the area of importance within the frame. This one consideration is too often overlooked when it comes to compositional decisions. The foundation for a composition is the space that the image occupies, everything else within that frame has to work within those confines. By changing the aspect ratio, those elements fit together much better. It inspired me to push through with an edit that I liked, but everything that I did was spoiled by the bright light that I had waited so patiently for. I needed to go back and see what my options were because I knew I had shot more than one of this scene.
I looked through all three of them, and it was that middle exposure that had the softer light which I didn’t want in the field that looked the best to me now. Just to see what would happen, I applied the same aspect ratio change to it and started to work through the processing. It actually started to come together quite nicely and with some creative masking, I was able to get the look that the photo deserved. It was added into this blog about thirty minutes ago after possibly 15 minutes worth of post processing. I just wanted to share with you that the last photo might never have seen the light of day had it not been for thinking through this blog entry and telling the story of the day.
Now that we are back on track, I was still working from the area that I really hadn’t seen much promise with when we first started to look. I figured that the best place was going to be where Bill was standing, but I had pretty well established that I was doing just fine with the area I was in. I was moving ever closer to Bill though, and that started to afford me better views of the waterfall to the left. This was the section that I had started out photographing and hadn’t really had a good shot of the upper portion of it which was one reason I was concentrating on the lower section. Now that I was moving further away from the road, I was starting to see other avenues for photos.
I was able to see the top section without anything blocking the way and I was interested in photographing it. It was along the same lines of some of the isolations that I had already shot of the other waterfalls, and I could definitely see this as a black and white composition just as those others had been. The light was good for a bit of extra contrast in the scene, and I wanted to take advantage of that. I was still shooting with my long lens and that was the best option for this composition as well. It didn’t take but a moment to frame it up and get a composition that showcased the beauty of the flowing water over the very random rocky path that it was flowing.
This one actually turned out to be one of my favorites from the day. It just has the perfect balance of light and dark bits within the frame, and I really like the texture that it shows in the water. It was another quick edit using the same basic tweaks that I did to the other black and white images. It really was nice to be able to go through the edits as quickly as I did. This doesn’t happen that often, especially when dealing with old cars. There is usually a great deal of masking work that I have to do with those. I’ve already said that waterfalls are a bit easier to work through in comparison and for pretty much the entire lot of photos I brought back from this trip, I kept the editing to a minimum. I wasn’t in a rush; they just really didn’t need much beyond how the camera had captured the scene as I saw it.
At this point, I went over to where Bill was and started setting up just at the edge of the area he was standing. I made sure that I wasn’t in his way as I started to set up for the next shot. This was a photo that that I really hadn’t planned on capturing. The light hadn’t been all that great across the whole waterfall when we got there which was another reason I was happy with doing isolations. The main reason was that each section of this waterfall required its own shutter speed it seemed. I was thinking that it would be really difficult to find a shutter speed that worked across the entire scene but here I was looking at the whole waterfall under even light and in pretty much full view. What’s a photographer to do?
Well, this photographer swapped out his lens for a wide-angle zoom and commenced to filling the frame with what he liked about the scene. What he liked was a view of the waterfall that he hadn’t even really seen yet. Everything just opened up, and it was beautiful. It was very hard not to think about the first impression looking over my shoulder through the rear windows of a pickup to something that was only partially visible to begin with. I had imagined the full view and had obviously studied the individual portions of it, but I was now prepared to see it all. Merry Falls was amazing and easily one of the more beautiful waterfalls that I have ever photographed. The fallen leaves that were all around it just heightened that allure because orange and green go together quite well and really break up the colors of the landscape. The two falls converging in into one just added to the visual interest. I was awestruck and so glad that we had stopped here. I’m glad I kept an open mind about the location and took a little time to get to know the different parts before I met the entire waterfall like this.
This view was good enough that it deserved a good bit of time and attention. I had the changing light to deal with that was causing some exposure issues, but I also had the two very different personalities to deal with in terms of the correct shutter speed that would work for both halves. I tried a lot of combinations over a total of nine frames in order to get the best combination of elements that I could for this photo. It was the sixth frame where the light, exposure, and the overall framing came together the best. It was stunning in the camera, and I was excited about how it looked in the image review. Keep in mind that my image review is based on a picture style that has no saturation and no contrast to speak of. I keep it as flat as possible so I have an accurate histogram for the RAW image which I can’t see in camera. Even with that visual handicap, I knew that this was going to be a winner.
When I was done with those nine frames, I felt like dropping the mike. I had captured way more than I thought would be possible, and I knew that one of those images would be a fitting end for my day. It was the sixth in that series of nine if you are counting. As Bill was finishing up, I looked back over my time in Brevard. I had gone from almost depressed and not even wanting to do much photography to reconnecting with nature, photographing three different waterfalls, and coming away with a total of 191 frames saved to the camera. When Bill and I got back into the truck, I said that I thought I had 186 or so frames, and that I was thinking that I was going to be looking at a hit rate of roughly 30%. He did the math really quick in his head while I pressed the accelerator and held the steering wheel. These were big numbers, and he needed his fingers and toes to figure this one out. He said that I was looking at roughly 36 keepers which matched up with what I was expecting based on my feelings from the trip.
Bill entered the hotel into the GPS so that we could go back and get my truck. There was no more mention of more waterfalls. I think that we both had reached an unspoken agreement that we were both worn out and needed to get back on the road to our homes. The danger now was that we both had been so excited during the day and running on creative adrenaline that the coming hours on the road were going to be rough as our systems calmed down and drowsiness started to enter into the equation.
On the way back to the hotel, we did speak about me joining him and a group of photographers during the middle of the month for a Fall waterfall tour. I’ll admit, I’m really interested in going to this after having such a grand time with these waterfalls. The only problem is that I’m going to be doing a maternity shoot that weekend leading into the time that they have scheduled the trip. I can’t have a pregnant woman waiting on me for waterfalls. I’m giving it just another couple of days to see if my Landscape workshop actually makes which it isn’t looking like. If that falls through, I will be able to bump the maternity shoot up a day and free up some time afterwards to head back to Brevard to chase waterfalls as TLC warned me not to do.
As I was considering the waterfall trip while we were heading back to the hotel, we noticed that the wind was really picking up. The clouds that had been just passing through were getting darker and darker now. There were some serious clouds on top of the mountain which looked pretty bad. By the time we got back to the hotel, it was raining. I mean, had we planned this out, we couldn’t have gotten the weather this perfect. The entire time that we were out shooting waterfalls, there was no rain when there should have been. There was sun, but when it came out it helped the images quite a bit. When we were done, the rain came. While it meant driving home in a driving rain, I’ll take that any day over being out on a photo trek and battling raindrops. I have absolutely no complaints about the weekend. Everything from the company to the food, to the waterfalls was excellent. I highly recommend it, 10 out of 10 for sure!
Almost as if a parting gift, I even got home in time to do my culling and go through a first round of processing before going to bed. I was finished with the core edits and the first installment of the blog series in time to go to my client meeting for the maternity shoot to discuss the creative process with them. It just now occurred to me after focusing on rushing water for the better part of a day, I was now hoping that the water didn’t break in the middle of the session. Being a photographer is weird!
Now that the blogs are all done and I’ve done all the processing I am going to do, let’s see how that estimate holds up. I shot a total of 191 frames, seven of which were of Bill so I’m not going to count those. That leaves a total frame count for the weekend at 184. Twenty percent of that would be 37 optimistically which is right at what Bill had counted on his fingers and toes. After the several late additions to the keepers, I’m left with a total haul of 32 keepers for essentially one day. It isn’t quite a 20% hit rate, but it dang sure is close. I’m thrilled at what I have captured and even the late additions are ones that I really like.
Time will tell if any of these photos end up in the most significant list for the year. I still stand by the statement that this trek as a whole is significant even if none of the individual images make the cut. At the time I am writing this entry, it is 5:30 on Tuesday afternoon, so three days after the trip. I’ve completely processed everything that I have been through and can still say without a question that this trek changed me in ways that I am not quite sure of. I know I am more deeply connected to nature than I was before the trip. I’m more in tune to photographing it now than I was. It is almost like I’ve gone back in time and found the joy in a simply beautiful scene once again. I have a much deeper understanding of the connection between photography and Haiku even after I thought I had that concept on lock. In essentially one day’s time, I have evolved into a different headspace than I had been before. I realize just how insignificant I am in this world, yet just how important I am at the same time.
Through the woods I go
Contemplating life and more
Click of the shutter
I thank each and every one of you for joining me on this trek and putting up with my poetry and pontifications. I really hope that you have enjoyed not only the photos but the story that went along with it. This is one that I really enjoyed writing because it was a voyage of self-discovery in many ways. I would also like to thank Bill for initiating this experience and Toni for pushing me to take advantage of it. It was Bob’s voice that stayed in my head through much of my time photographing these falls as I saw the world through his eyes, albeit from a much lower altitude, and for that I am grateful. Kevin Adams and the Waterfall Keepers of NC also deserve to be on this list for making access to Eastatoe Falls even possible.
Wow… this is starting to sound like an award acceptance speech. I have won nothing that I am aware of. There were just so many moving parts to this trek. It wasn’t the typical wake up, grab camera, and go hunt photos like normal. It was an adventure, and one that I will not soon forget.
Until next time….
