Wednesday, August 5, 2026
I’m just as surprised as you are about this blog entry. I really didn’t imagine that I would be doing another one just yet. In fact, I was kind of set to just stay at home today and wait for the weather to happen that I was looking for in order to photograph Rendezvous Mountain on Thursday morning. Toni and I were watching TV as the evening was coming to a close last night and I was all set to sleep in for a bit. Just in case the weather had changed any, I did check that out a little before 9pm or so. There was no rain in the forecast, but the clouds were looking very low and there was even a chance of fog during the morning hours. It was certainly a lousy set of conditions for working the mountain. I did need to get something going on that because I knew that my client was needing the photo sometime this week for his deadline. It just wasn’t going to be in the morning, and I figured that the light would be wrong later in the day when the clouds were looking like they would be higher in elevation.
While the forecast didn’t look good for what I needed to be doing, this was a good forecast for doing waterfalls which I hadn’t done in a while. In fact, after checking, I haven’t done a single waterfall during 2026 which was quite surprising to me. I guess the Winter was so tied up with snow and then lots of decay work that I never really got around to doing any waterfalls. By the time things started to warm up there was a serious drought. I did have intentions of going to South Mountains with Bob Roffman who is a waterfall savant these days, but that plan got cancelled due to some unforeseen circumstances. It was during the drought, so it was probably for the best anyway.
I had been looking forward to getting back to South Mountains and seeing how everything faired after the hurricane in 2024. The park had recently opened back up and as far as I could tell, only High Shoals Falls was still closed. This is not a fun waterfall to photograph, so I wasn’t concerned with that. There were other falls and cascades in the park that I was looking forward to working with.
With a quick check of the weather, it was looking like 75-95% cloud cover over the park according to one weather app. My other cloud app was showing less than 40% of low clouds during the morning before the rain started to kick up. These forecasts were very much in opposition with each other, so I wasn’t sure if I was going to get to go or not. Just in case, I did get to sleep a little earlier than I normally would have with plans on waking up around 5:45 or so when Toni got up to go down to Concord for the day.
Neither of us slept well, and that was probably due to me continually waking up through most of the night. Each time I woke up I thought about checking the weather but decided that I was just not going to be awake enough in the morning to deal with it. When 5:30 came, I was awake and since that was pretty close to when I was wanting to get up, I decided to go ahead and check the weather. The two forecasts were still pretty much the same, so it was going to be a gamble if I went. I knew that I would only be there for a couple of hours, and looking at the forecast at home, there was now a chance of getting the right kind of conditions for the mountain that I was needing to photograph right around the middle of the day. It was going to be cloudy which would relax the need for the direction of the sun, so there was a decent chance that I could get something to work out on the way home if I went to South Mountains. If I didn’t go, I knew me well enough that I would just end up staying at home because by that point, I would have gotten involved with something else.
Reluctantly, I rolled out of bed and started my day. I ended up leaving at 6:15 with roughly an hour and a half drive ahead of me. The entire way down to the park I was happy to see very cloudy skies with really good light getting started. It wasn’t until I was about 20 miles from the park that the clouds opened up and revealed a large area of blue sky. This didn’t make me happy at all, but I knew that a couple of the spots that I wanted to photograph could be done in the shadow from the mountain which would protect me from the sun. There was also the chance that the clouds would still be covering the park as it seems to have its own weather patterns at times.
When I pulled into the parking lot, the clouds were overhead, but I could see bits of blue which meant that I was going to have some lighting difficulties potentially through the morning. I wasn’t sure where I wanted to start the day. The two locations on the way to High Shoals Falls would work easily in the morning shade, but I wasn’t sure how Big Bear Falls would behave as I have not shot it early in the morning before. The hike was started without a full idea of which way I would go first.
That decision was made for me pretty quickly though. By the time I got to the fork in the trail, I found that the entire branch of the trail going to High Shoals Falls was closed. I was thinking that by this point, it would just be the long staircase and viewing platform for the falls. This was a pretty long stretch of trail, and that eliminated a couple of places that I wanted to work with. My decision was much simpler at this point though, as it appeared that I was going to Big Bear Falls.
This is one of the newer features of the park and I think that the trail had just opened up in 2021 or thereabouts. It isn’t a hard trail at all and didn’t take long at all. It was a good sign that I was the only one out here because the footing is a little sketchy where I was wanting to be. It gets worse when I’m having to work around other hikers. The water flow was very nice for this waterfall, and I think might be the best that I have seen it. Other than a tree that was draped across the top of the opening for the waterfall, there were no signs of damage from the hurricane. That fallen tree was far enough up that it wasn’t going to bother my compositions at all.
It was time to start working out the compositions. I remembered some from a while back that I had shot that featured a partially submerged portion of rock that had a hole eroded in the top. I found that this makes for a fantastic foreground feature to introduce the waterfall and wanted to start off with that. It was kind of the low hanging fruit of the day and made a lot of sense after having been away from waterfalls for so long. There is a certain skillset to doing these and I haven’t been keeping up with my practice like I should have been. This would allow me to start off where I remembered doing things before, but in a very different season.
The location that I needed to get was right at the transition from dry rock to the actual pond at the base of the falls. I had to get in close to the edge with the camera down low in order to get the right perspective. Of course, the lens of choice was going to be the wide-angle lens because I needed to make that foreground much larger than it would normally appear. Of course, I added my polarizer filter since I was dealing with water. I knew that this composition worked well as a portrait orientation as well as a landscape orientation. I had shot it that way before and did the same thing this time as well.
Speaking of using my polarizer, you might have noticed that the Singh-Ray Filters logo is back at the bottom of the blog entries. This is something that used to be attached to every one of my blog entries. This is not because they are sponsoring me or these entries, but I am an affiliate with them. At least I was for many years before they had some restructuring hurdles to get over during the last three years or so. During that time, they were either not open for business, or were operating at a very reduced capacity. I didn’t know where I stood with them, so it felt kind of odd putting their logo in the blogs during that time. I’ve been in contact with Kanwal Singh over the past couple of years as they have been getting things back up and running which has now taken place. Things are back in full operation once again, and my status as an affiliate is still active with my discount code of KISER10 back in full effect. It is now being run by Kanwal’s son Sohan and Kanwal is working with the resin filters in Virginia now. I’m glad that they have come out on the other side because I still believe in my Sing-Ray filters and have been using them exclusively for decades now. If you are in the market for filters, drop by their website and see what they are offering. Tell them that I sent you and use that code, KISER10 to get 10% off your purchase.
Once I had the easy compositions done, I started to look for other variations to use for the falls. The next thing that came to mind was a simple look at the waterfall without a dramatic foreground. I felt that this worked well with the summer colors above the falls. The punchy greens were a nice addition to the scene from how I remembered it during the winter. The composition was a pretty basic vertical shot that just showcased the entire waterfall in all its glory.
The colors helped bring the viewer’s eyes all around the different elements which made this composition far more interesting than the basic postcard shot should have been. The rocks had a really terrific red/orange mineral content to them which was glowing in the diffused light of the morning. There was enough light to arrive at my working shutter speeds without having to do anything creative with the exposure. Everything was just falling into place quite nicely which made me very happy that I ended up here. I wasn’t even upset that I wasn’t able to get to the other spots that I wanted to photograph.
I was interested to know what was going to change with those areas as I am figuring that the entire boardwalk was going to be reworked. Over the years, I had figured out how to get around just to the side of the boardwalk so that I could get the better angles on the different features that I wanted to photograph. Hopefully, they will leave the original design the same, or maybe improve it for photographers looking to get down low to the water. I just hope that they don’t make it more difficult to get good photos, safely. Time will tell, and hopefully, by the time that Bob is ready to head out there they will be all done with the rebuild. I’ll keep my fingers crossed.
After I had worked the simple composition of the waterfall, I started to look at the more complex scene as a whole. To the right of the waterfall was a smaller cascade under a large overhanging boulder while to the left was the runoff from that level of the pool as it kicked off to another cascade. I had tried to get this all into a photo before without success because of how the light was looking at the time. The sun was nice and soft at this point, and I saw no reason why I wouldn’t be able to get this photo organized and shot.
I was still using my wide-angle lens, which was just about perfect for the shot, but honestly, my 14mm would have been better. Why didn’t I use that lens you ask? Well, for starters, I can’t use any filters with it because of the spherical front element. OK, that is really the only reason that I couldn’t use it here, because without the polarizer attached, there would just be too much glare, and the colors would all wash out. Using the 16-35mm lens was a little tricky here though. It forced me to back up right to the edge of the bank above that second pool down below. If I had been able to get to the full 16mm end of the lens, this would have been plenty, but with the 105mm wide filter on the end of it, vignetting happened at 18mm. This kind of crowded the composition, so to balance it all out, I went with a 16:9 aspect ratio that got the top and bottom crops a bit closer to match with the sides. This worked, but I think it would have been much better with the 14mm which would have allowed me to get a little closer and include more of the top and bottom for breathing room.
Regardless, this photo did turn out pretty solid and I’m really quite happy with it. The lighting was perfect and the colors really showed up nicely in the frame. The greens and oranges really pop and define the different spaces. The composition had a nice balance to it as well with lots to look at within the frame, but nothing really pulls your eyes out of the photo which is nice. That one rock feature with the eroded hole still forms a very valuable portion of the foreground for a ton of visual interest to introduce the image. It also provides a countering diagonal to the image for some more interest.
From here, I started to work around some other angles, and I tried some other photos with the same lens. It didn’t take long for me to realize that I was basically repeating everything that I had already done. That was my hint that it was either time to move on, or to change lenses. Since this was pretty much my only waterfall that I was going to be able to shoot today, I decided to change up my lens and see what I could do with the telephoto lens.
It wasn’t that many years ago that I would have done this whole location with the standard zoom and been happy with it. This time, I was making a point of avoiding that lens because I knew that perspective was very important here and if I wasn’t including a foreground, I was going to want compression. Essentially, I was working on the edges of that standard zoom to really keep me from going with basic compositions.
Once I swapped the glass for the long lens, I was pretty determined that I was going to be working with black and white images to give the photos a bit more of that abstract view of the textures involved with the waterfall. The first thing that I did was to zoom the lens into about 100mm and start looking at the different sections of the waterfall to see what was looking promising. The spot that I found first was near the top of the waterfall with the small feeder cascade that was dropping right next to some vegetation on the side of the bank. I liked how this was looking from a texture point of view and framed up a shot that I thought worked through the viewfinder.
Once I had the basic composition figured out, I went to the live view and switched the profile over to black and white so that I could see a bit more effectively what I was going to be photographing. I’m glad that I did that because the balance was off with how I had it worked out to begin with. After panning over to the side slightly, I was back on track for a well-balanced image with lots of texture to keep the eyes busy.
The part that I really liked about this was the very light-colored rock that was at the top of the waterfall. It had actually been a distraction in color, but in black and white it turned into a very valuable element that brought a sense of depth to the scene that was almost a visual trick in a way. I thought that it actually made the image when I saw how it came together.
I liked how that one turned out, but it wasn’t exactly abstract enough for me. I wanted something that really took on a different form with the way that the water was flowing. I did the thing where I looked through the viewfinder once again and tried to find an area that worked. What I landed on was down at the base of the falls where I could make out some of the rock behind the water. It wasn’t ideal, but it was a decent enough scene to get something abstract out of.
I got the basic composition figured out and started to make exposures to see what the moving water looked like. This changed the image slightly, so I altered the framing to go along with the shapes that I was seeing. I then started to make several exposures as the water shapes would change from frame to frame. This is a handy thing to do with waterfalls after you get the exposure you want figured out. The more frames you shoot, the more different looks you will get for any give scene. I shot way more than I probably should have here, but I needed to get the shadow to water ratio as close to what I had in mind as possible. I really wish that the detail of the water showed through in the web quality image here. Sadly, it is a little muddy in the details, but the actual print image will come out very nice with better textures than you are seeing here.
Speaking of prints, don’t forget that I do offer prints of all my photographs. These are made to order, so essentially that makes them “bespoke” to use the term that all the cool kids are saying. I offer these prints in different media like photo papers, fine art papers, metal, and canvas. Of course, the sizes can be made to best fit your space for that total decorating control. If you like the photo seen online, I guarantee that you will LOVE them in print form where I have control over the colors and contrasts while using the full resolution image file for the source of the print. What you are seeing here is a shrunken version that is then compressed down to 20-50% of the original quality for ease of uploading and displaying on your device. These are only an indication of what to expect when ordering a print, so keep that in mind when you are looking at the web images from these treks.
Feeling that I had covered all I wanted with Big Bear Falls, I started to turn my attention to the lower section. I didn’t see a way to get down to that area without risking myself or my camera, so I didn’t bother to try and work my way down there. Instead, I looked for a composition that would work from the level that I was currently standing. I tried a few different locations and even shot a few frames, but in the end, I didn’t like how they looked and there was nothing at all interesting about the photos. Not finding anything else, I started to consider that I had spent enough time with this waterfall and started to think about packing things up.
That was when I saw the waterfall from my slightly lower position and further away. It was a different view of the waterfall and one that had part of the rocky wall blocking the view of the top portion of the waterfall. I kind of liked it from here and it certainly offered a different look to what I had already spent some time with. Just to see where I was at, I looked through the viewfinder with the long lens still attached. It actually framed up quite nicely with that lens and I saw lots of potential here. I just needed to move my camera bag, which was still sitting on the bank, roughly in the center of the lower edge of the photo.
Once I got the bag moved, I started to really dial in the composition. Then it was a matter of working through the exposure of the scene which was mostly already figured out from the time that I had worked it before. Once that was done, I started to fire off frames with the water taking on different shapes with each press of the button. I quickly realized that the smaller cascade to the right was also changing up with each frame and I decided that I wanted to get both falls as full as possible in a single frame. Most of what I had shot up to this point had the secondary falls appearing much smaller than they actually were which I didn’t like for this photo.
Over time, I started to get the rhythm of the water and could tell when both were going to swell, and my hit rate started to improve at that point. By the end of it, I had a bunch of these photos to choose from when it came to post processing. There were two that stood out from the rest, and I decided that since this composition worked well as both a black and white as well as color, I would I would do one of each. You are actually seeing two different photos here which share the same composition and exposure. There was a slight shift in framing between them as I realized in some of the images there was a bit of cascade that was showing at the very top edge that was a distraction. To keep from cropping that out in the final images, I shifted the framing to eliminate that potential distraction.
When I was satisfied with how the images were coming together and felt that I had enough to choose from I decided to call it a day. I had been out here longer than I had anticipated, but that was no problem since I didn’t have access to the other waterfalls in the park. Feeling pretty satisfied with around 100 frames captured, I packed the camera up and started back down the trail. I knew that there was a possibility that I would be stopping at the fork in the trail because the stream also forked there with some interesting cascades that I had seen on the way to Big Bear Falls. I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to get a large section of it photographed because there were many trees down which complicated the view leading up the stream. The safe bet was doing some isolations which I had done there many times before.
When I arrived, my quick thoughts proved to be pretty accurate in terms of what I was going to be able to photograph. There was one little area that had some really nice white water aspects to it right in the intersection of the three sections of the stream. It was going to be another great situation for the long lens which I had just used with the last waterfall. Once I had the camera put back together again, I started to work out the compositions that were available to me. It became a game of elevation to get as many of the distractions out of the way as possible. Then it was a matter of finding the best framing for the rough compositions.
This is where following the rules would have potentially gotten me in trouble as I arbitrarily placed things according to the rule of thirds. I was aware of the grid on the camera, but I was leaning much more heavily in the direction of what felt right to my eyes. This was more of a centered approach to the composition which did add to the feeling of calmness. Even though I was enjoying the idea of making this a calming composition, there was no denying that this was going to make a good black and white image as well as a color one. I shot them in color but figured that I would be going back in and converting to black and white for at least one of them depending on how many worked out.
I did several versions of the vertical as well as horizontal compositions before I called it a day. When I got the images home, I decided on one horizontal and one vertical image for the collection of keepers. As I had anticipated, I made the horizontal photo a black and white because the main feature of the photo was the textures and not so much the location or subject. The vertical one felt better in color because the subject of the photo was more the path of the stream through the rocks and I felt that needed the color to help define the pathway a little better.
I’m really happy with how these both turned out and I’m glad that I stopped here before going back to the truck. I had spent roughly two hours in the park which was about what I had figured I would be doing when I was considering shooting the other secondary cascades that were closed off. Fortunately, I was able to use that time with the areas that I did have access to and that gave me the ability to get quite a few variations on the compositions. There were 128 frames stored on my memory cards which was a huge haul of images, but there were a lot of repeats for capturing different water flow. This meant that there was no way that my hit rate was going to be as high as it has been in recent times. There was no way around it though as without changing anything on my end, the scene would change dramatically between each frame shot with no two being the same. I could have shot twice as many frames and potentially come away with better examples than I have here. I just didn’t have the patience to spend that much time on a single composition knowing that I would be tossing the vast majority of the images. The gains would have been marginal had I stuck with it, and that would have meant fewer compositions shot and more time spent culling the images.
I knew that if the weather was doing what I was hoping back home, I would have even more photos to work through because I still had that photo of Rendezvous Mountain that needed to be shot. I knew that was going to be a panorama, so there were going to be many more frames involved in that. If I didn’t get them today, I was going to be trying first thing in the morning tomorrow. My day off was starting to get a little busy at this point and I was realizing that I was a long way away from being able to rest and relax.
Not to spoil the fun, but the weather did cooperate and I was able to get the photo done on the way home. I didn’t really like the end result because the subject didn’t really work well with the mandated 2:1 aspect ratio of the wall. The framing that I actually shot was much better, but there was no way to make it work for the size wall that they were needing filled. That was the first image that I worked on when I got home and after the hour or so of working with it and getting it ready as a proof, I sent it off for approval. It was accepted and apparently was perfect for what they were after. The client was invoiced and the final image which was sized at 48″ x 96″ at 300 dpi was uploaded to the cloud. This file will again be stretched to around 150 dpi for the final install and will be ready in time for school to start. I’m actually kind of proud to have my photo in the school and I hope to be able to get by to check it out sometime soon.
My plan as of right now is to work on one of the alternate series of photos that I shot and create a panorama that I like of the scene which will be in color. That will be what I share here in the blogs. That will hopefully happen tomorrow, but that will all depend on whether or not I actually like the final image that I come up with. I know that the sky was much more interesting than I was actually hoping for with the commissioned image which has led me to want to process a version for me. This also gives me the chance to get the full width of the pano for maximum impact. Let’s see if that works out for me.
Thank you so much for joining me on this trek. I hope that you have enjoyed the little intermission with the waterfalls after so much decay and creative photography that I’ve been doing recently. I know that there is a want for my landscape images and that is still probably the biggest seller when it comes to prints. I enjoy working with landscapes, but it becomes dangerous for me to only look for “pretty” pictures as that really limits what I can shoot. I like making great photos of the mundane and finding subjects that tell a story. The unfortunate end of that is that I don’t sell as many prints of that type of photography which kind of makes it disappointing in a way to photograph even though I love it. I’ll always try and keep a good mix of the photography genres in place though as it does keep me on my toes and fresh with ideas. Who knows what I will shoot next.
There has been a late addition to the keepers from this trek. Check out the new photo in this quick blog entry.
Until that next time….
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