Wednesday, April 22, 2025
So, the message thread went something like this.
Me: So, this is the upper section of Catawba Falls huh? I’ve been wanting to get back out there to check out the new trail up there.
Bob: It is much easier to get to than it was before, but I should have left my gear at the bottom.
Me: Why is that?
Bob: My bag got really heavy doing all the climbing up there.
Me: Ahhhh, well, you know I’m happy to have a bit of a vigorous hike. I’m a glutton for punishment.
That was essentially the back and forth that I had with Bob who is a friend and long time client of mine after he posted a series of photos from Catawba Falls maybe a month or so ago. It had been sometime last year that the park had opened up a new trail from the lower falls to the upper section. Originally, this had been a scramble path which was not very easy to do. I had never given it a try because most of what I had read said that it really wasn’t worth the effort involved, and I have a tendency to get lost on scramble paths which added another level of “don’t wanna” to the mix. However, with a good deal of renovating with the park, that issue was corrected with a series of steps to get to the top section.
Bob’s photos had inspired me to really get out there and check things out. The plan had been to go out there last Fall, but there was a little hurricane that came through and closed the entire area before I could make it. Things had just recently reopened when Bob had gone by to visit it. Now, he is first and foremost a waterfall photographer, so he makes the rounds with all the Falls in the area kind of regularly. I don’t think he wasted much time getting out there when he did. We had done a mentoring session at Linville Falls a couple of years ago which had included a good deal of climbing as we went up to Erwin’s View and then all the way down to the basin at the bottom. He had also attended a workshop at Stone Mountain a couple of years ago that included a pretty good climb from the homestead at the bottom to the top of the main summit. I had a pretty good idea what would constitute a strain for hiking with him. I was pretty sure I had an understanding of what was ahead of me with the hike for the upper falls and was excited to give it a try.
The problem that we have been running into has been a significant lack of rain and cloudy days. These are two things that I consider mandatory for good waterfall photography. Without water, many falls are just trickles over some rocks which rarely interest me. The clouds keep the sun from creating large specular highlights in the water and deep shadows under the rocky ledges of the rocks. I like having a nice even exposure to work with when I start my post processing because I can build the contrast where I want it to be. That being said, I was having to put off this trek until we had some rain, followed by a nice cloudy day.
As it turned out, this week has had rain in the forecast for most of the days, but it has remained slightly West of us for the most part which put it right over Catawba Falls in Old Fort, NC. Tuesday had a few showers that crept into the Wilkes County area, but spent most of the time along the mountain range which I knew would help build up the water flow. The forecast for Wednesday was set to be cloudy with some sprinkles here and there in the afternoon. This was a pretty good setup for waterfall photography, and I started to put together a plan of action for it.
Catawba Falls is right at 1:40 from home which meant that I was going to be spending some time on the road to get there. It was also known for attracting a lot of visitors through the day, even during the week. I’ve seen it firsthand on the times that I have been there with the parking lot filling up every time I’ve gone. On one of the last times I went, I had to jockey for position with the camera, and there were so many people flooding onto the trails as I was leaving, it was hard to navigate the trails. This is one thing that I really don’t care for when it comes to doing photography as people make things very difficult for me in terms of compositions and where I can place the camera. Of course, just moving around in the park becomes difficult as well.
The best answer for that problem was to plan on getting there early so that I could get done with the photos I wanted before the crowds got there. I wanted to be there by 8am in order to beat the crowds. This meant that I was going to need to leave about the time that Toni left for work. Looking at the weather in detail before we headed to bed, it was looking like my weather app was showing good cloud cover for the full day. However, my cloud forecast app was showing much thinner clouds with about 60-75% coverage across all altitudes. From experience, I figured that this was going to mean some blue sky and sunlight. The thinnest the clouds were expected happened to be around 10am. That wasn’t going to give me much time to work since I had refreshed my memory on the hike distance at just over a mile and a quarter. It was going to take me right at 35-40 minutes to get to the lower falls, and then there was going to be another long climb up the trail to get to the upper section which was my main reason for going.
Hoping for a tie breaker, I checked the weather on Toni’s iPhone which is a little different than mine. Her phone was saying that the clouds were going to be thick all day around the Falls and there was no rain in the forecast. The smart money was on good conditions through the day, and I would be able to stay as long as needed to get the shots that I wanted. I just had to make sure that I was up at 5am in order to be on my way shortly after 6am.
When the clock rang at the predetermined time, I dutifully checked the weather report. It was showing partly cloudy skies with more clouds on the way. Nothing really had changed for the forecast in either of my apps. Knowing that this would be as good a time as any to give this a shot, I decided to get up and give it a try. If nothing else, I would be getting a good hike in because I recalled this hike being a bit strenuous if I didn’t pace myself from the beginning.
The ride out there was just about perfect with some dense fog through most of the trip which I really liked. If I was really lucky, that fog would remain low to the ground all the way to the falls for a bit of atmosphere. It was a longshot, but I was going to be getting there just before 8am which would still be early enough for the fog to linger.
Sadly, it didn’t look like the fog was going to hang around as I was making my way through Lenoir. The lighting was still looking really good with lots of clouds hanging overhead. That was all I needed, the fog was going to be the icing on the cake. Shortly after I got on I-40, I started seeing drops of water on my windshield. The rain wasn’t expected, but here it was. In a very short amount of time, the drops got faster, and the rain got harder. It was no longer a drizzle; it was a full-on rain shower. A quick check of the local weather showed that the rain was going to be in the area until sometime between 9-10am. I might be sitting and waiting for the rain for about an hour in the parking lot. I’ve done that before and was prepared to do it again.
When I did arrive at the parking lot, the rain was pretty much stopped. The smart decision would have been to just hang out until all the green radar returns had passed by the area. I’m not always smart though and decided to hike in the drizzle with the hopes that the rain would be done by the time I got into position. I would happily bypass the lower falls since I have photographed them several times before which would give me probably a grand total of an hour or so before I was ready to pull the camera out.
After getting my gear, I made my way to the trailhead passing two other vehicles in the parking lot. It was a good sign that there were so few, and I hoped that it would indicate that I would be basically alone with the waterfalls. I stopped at the map to see if there was any reference to the new trail. They did have a bit of information on it and the part that caught my eyes first was the 580 steps to get to the upper section which they say is equivalent to climbing a 30-story building. Hmmm, that is more than the dreaded staircase at Hanging Rock that I’ve done enough to know that I don’t like climbing stairs that much. The hike to the lower falls was like 1.3 miles and the extra to get to the upper falls made it around 2 miles, one-way. I knew that the main hike wasn’t too terrible as long as I didn’t push for a speed record as there was a bit of climbing involved just to get to that lower section.
I started off on the trail as I had done in the past. It had been a few years, so I wasn’t expecting to remember much about the trails and figured that they had possibly been reworked after Helene passed through. It wasn’t long and I was actually in completely unfamiliar territory with lots of switchbacks that I didn’t remember being there. I also was missing the remains of a building with a bridge over the stream that I remembered being kind of close to the trailhead. There were several little spots along the trail with some smaller waterfalls that didn’t seem to be coming up when I was expecting them to. In fact, I was feeling like there was nothing at all on this trail when normally it has several little things to check out before finding the falls.
After looking at my watch and seeing that I was at a mile into the hike, I knew that I was supposed to be seeing something by this point because I was almost to the falls. All I knew was that I was tired of climbing. It seemed that shortly after leaving the parking lot, the trail had pitched up and I was constantly climbing which I didn’t remember from the last time. The only thing that I could think of was that they had to reroute the trail due to damage from the hurricane. There had been no other trails to access from the parking lot, so I was sure I was on the one that I was supposed to be.
It was around this mile point that I passed a couple walking in the other direction. Had I been thinking clearly, I would have asked to see where the trail was going to come out at, but I didn’t think about it. I just said, “good morning” and kept on going. I kept seeing rescue markers that were numbered in the 30’s and going down. This added another fold to my concerns because if I was going to be seeing the first marker, I was in for a very long hike to get there. Checking my watch, I was now at 1.3 miles and that was where I usually would have seen the lower falls. There wasn’t even a whisper of water in the distance that would indicate that I might be seeing the waterfall soon enough.
I was getting worried, not only because I thought that I might be on the wrong trail to see the falls, but I was also worried that I was on the right one. If this came out at the lower falls and I still had 580 stairs to climb, I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to make it without having some Doordash for energy. My legs were already screaming at me from the climb up the mountain that I really wasn’t expecting. I was giving serious thought to stopping at the lower falls and possibly making that my only stop. I knew that I would push through to get to the upper falls because that was why I had come, but I might seriously need to take a break before tackling those stairs and just plan to be in traction tomorrow as I recovered.
Around 1.75 miles according to my watch, I started to hear water which was good. I had also passed one of the rescue points where somebody had written on it “Top of the Hill” which was accurate. The rest of the hike was roughly level, or slightly downhill which was really nice. It was just hard to escape the fact that I had traveled nearly a half mile more than I was expecting and still hadn’t arrived at the first waterfall. At least there were no other hikers out there so it was looking like I would be able to have my way with the waterfalls should I ever arrive. Speaking of which, there was no doubt that I was going to stop at the first one and get some photos while my legs rested before climbing those 580 steps, which was equivalent to a 30-story building. I was more in the mood for a novella, or a short story myself, not something nearly that long and involved.
I just kept thinking about the conversation that I had had with Bob a while back. He had told me that the hike was brutal and I really kind of dismissed him. Those memories had faded now and all I could think of was “I should have listened to Bob.” This hike is rough with a 25lb bag on my back, knowing that I still had 58 steps to climb to get to the waterfall that I wanted to see the most. I could have left a couple of lenses behind, and maybe some filters. There was no doubt that I was bringing way more gear than I was probably going to need, and it was going to cause me some major difficulties getting up to that waterfall.
At 2.1 miles into my hike, I caught a glimpse of a tall waterfall. It was on my left which seemed strange as I had always come up to the lower falls with them on my right. Obviously, there was a huge reroute done to the trails, but I was at least at the first stop. The thought of a break was a huge relief and I was excited to pull the camera out and get a few shots whether they worked or not. My legs needed to stop moving for a while. That was when I saw it….
There was the new boardwalk/staircase on the other side of the waterfall. This was the side that I normally would have come in on. The reroute made perfect sense, but there was a problem. I could see caution netting closing off the entrance to the stairs right there at the base. There appeared to be no other access to the stairs and no way to climb around in order to get back on the trail. I couldn’t think of what had happened since Bob had been here to result in the trail being closed to get to the upper falls. The wind was knocked cleanly out of my sails because I wasn’t going to get to see the waterfall that I had come out here to capture. I wasn’t even paying any attention to the waterfall I was at because I was so disgusted that the trail going up the hill was closed off.
Well, I was here, I might as well get some shots of the same waterfall that I had visited several times before. I turned my attention to it for the first time in earnest. I could see the large rocks at the bottom that I was expecting to find. These are great platforms for getting close to the waterfall, but the waterfall seemed to be closer than I remembered. It was also more concentrated than I recalled it being. In fact, it looked nothing like what I had remembered. Had the hurricane changed the face of the falls so drastically that they now looked different? My mind was very confused for a minute or two, but that might be partly due to the fact that my heart rate was still at 186bpm.
I pulled everything that I could remember about the waterfall and decided that this couldn’t be it. It had to be the upper falls which would explain the fact that I had just climbed a trail straight up the mountain. Essentially, I had missed out on the 580 steps which I was very happy for and that made the long slog up the mountain worth it. The boardwalk and stairs still confused me as they went up instead of down. The lower falls were below here, and that little detail baffled me. I assume that it works its way over a ridge and then down to the other falls. Whatever the case was, I was at the waterfall that I had wanted to see and had very recently been disappointed that I wasn’t going to see it today. The fact that I wasn’t able to access the lower falls wasn’t all that bad of a realization. I just had more time with this one, and for the time being, I was the only one here.
I found an area out of the spray and put my bag down before opening it. I walked around for a few minutes and took in the new waterfall trying to figure out how best to photograph it. I could see isolations within it that I knew I would be shooting, but I wanted to get an overall establishing shot of it to begin with. The waterfall originated between trees showing an open canopy. The sky was cloudy, but very bright. I knew that I was going to want to omit the sky from the composition. That meant that I needed some form of foreground interest to give depth. That was where the rocks came into play. Looking at the scope of the composition, I knew that I was going to need my 16-35mm lens to get started with.
I pulled the camera out and mounted that wide-angle lens to it. I also added a polarizer to cut the glare. The rain had recently stopped which was good. Unfortunately, the water coming over the ledge was producing a spray over the entire area. It was a very fine mist, but something that I was going to have to keep in mind as I was going to have to clean off the filter from time to time. The next step was to get the camera into position for the shot that I had in mind. That was not all that easy because the large rock at the base just seemed to line up with the waterfall no matter where I put the camera.
I ended up making many exposures as I was testing camera placement, composition building, and shutter speeds to get an idea how best to capture this waterfall. After about 15 minutes or so, I ended up climbing some rocks to the left of the scene. This gave me extra elevation on the foreground for separation and changed the position of the rocks in the foreground. I was no longer shooting the large rock as I was standing on some directly to the left of it. However, there was a smaller rock that now became my foreground and the scaling of it was much better for the scene when compared to the larger rock in front of it.
I now had a workable composition, and I had about figured out the exposure settings that I would need for this scene. It was at this point that I started firing for effect as it were. I would make the exposure and then review the photo looking at the movement of the water and any distractions that might be creeping into the edges. I also evaluated how the composition looked as a whole when viewed from a distance as if it were hanging on a wall. Things were looking good, and I was thinking that I was onto something. I still wasn’t elated with the photos, but I had some in the can that I was very hopeful for.
After shooting 21 frames, I decided it was time to swap lenses for the telephoto lens in order to get some of the detail shots. This was where I really was excited about the waterfall. There were lots of little areas of interest that I was looking forward to capturing. Once I had the lens on, I started to pull out different areas and look for compositions that would tell those stories. It was five more frames before I got what would turn out to be my first keeper of the day.
There is absolutely no doubt that when it comes to waterfalls, I am very rusty. I had just gone through a roll of film (essentially) with nothing to show for it. I had been trying to listen to the landscape, but the communication had been slow to start, and I had been slow to receive. Had this been a rusty Chevrolet I would have been able to jump right in and nail a shot pretty quick, but this is something that I haven’t shot since last September. Waterfalls have a kind of specific set of compositional requirements that were just not clicking with me right off. That was slowly changing though, and shooting the isolations helped to break the falls into more manageable pieces.
I continued to shoot the isolations and found that this waterfall had two very distinct personalities between the left and right foot of it. When I had first arrived, I really thought that the right side was going to be the side that I worked with the most because it had a lot of visual interest. The truth of it was that for the most part, that section needed to be photographed as a whole to have it make sense. It was the left side that was able to be shot from different points. I was able to get vertical and horizontal compositions very easily. I could crop in close or leave the terminal end of the water drop in the frame. There were different levels that I could play with which allowed me to pick out all kinds of details. That left side kept me busy for the longest time.
In order to get the shots that I wanted on that left side; I found myself back up on the same rocks that I had started the day out on. I went a little higher up than before and found another little platform that was easier to work with. I also liked the angle better than the spot I had picked before. It allowed me to get the compositions that I wanted from the left side of the falls, and that pretty much wrapped up my time with this waterfall. I had captured everything that I thought I would want. I pulled the camera back down off the rocks and went back to my bag.
Before I broke everything down, I went back through the frames that I had shot. I removed all the data from the review screen and just looked at the photos as large as I could. Something that I started to notice early on was the fact that I had a bit of clipping in the water where I might be losing some detail. This is something that happens pretty easy in waterfall photography, but I hadn’t caught it earlier. When I added the exposure information to the review along with the histogram, the areas were so small that they didn’t show up on the review with the highlight warning. There was maybe a pixel or two that clipped in that small view, so I hadn’t worried about it. Now that I was looking at the larger image, I could see larger areas of clipping which I didn’t like. I was also still not very happy with how the compositions had turned out.
I was still here and had a better working relationship with the waterfall now after about 40 minutes with it. It would cost me nothing to swap lenses once again and give the overall shots another try. I could get back to that last position on the rocks that I had been at which would probably put the larger rock in a better position relative to the waterfall and give me a bit more dimension to the entire image. In a few minutes, I was back up on the rocks with the camera capturing a much larger scene than what I had been working not that long ago.
My goal for this set of images was to capture something that had more depth and meaning than what I had captured before. The compositions were going to be roughly the same, but I was at a different angle now which provided much more depth. The light was also different at this point because the clouds were actually parting allowing the sun to shine through. It struck me as odd that after looking at three different apps for the clouds, it was the one that wasn’t in agreeance that had accurately forecasted the clouds. It turned out to be a good thing because the sunlight was starting to illuminate the trees to the right of the waterfall which added another layer of interest to the scene while the waterfall remained in the shadows keeping the highlights at bay.
As before, I tried both horizontal and vertical frames for this waterfall because I thought that it worked well either way. There are plenty of waterfalls out there which work better one way or the other, but this was one that worked equally as well in either format. For me, it was a matter of where the photo would hang that would dictate which orientation would be the best of the two. Not wanting to miss out on being able to fill a need of a client for a print, I was happy to shoot both variations.
I did continue the routine of trying different shutter speeds to see which one gave the right texture to the water. This upped my frame count as expected. The end result was 78 frames captured of this one waterfall. I had actually thought that the number was going to be somewhere closer to the mid-40’s to 50’s as my mental abacus was keeping up with the shutter activations. It was a happy surprise to see this many frames captured, and I hoped that it would bring me about four to five keepers which was what I was banking on.
As I normally do, I culled the images from the end down to the first frames captured. This allows me to look at what is likely the best of the shots first. This is a perfect example of how that works so well. Had I gone in order, there would have been several in that first group of 21 frames that would have gotten scored a first star. However, because I started culling from the last frames captured, I knew that I had strong overall images to pick from and none of the first 21 frames made it into the second round of culling. I ended up only needing three rounds to get to where I had eight images to look at for processing.
It is interesting to note that two of those images that made it through the culling were ultimately discarded because they were just not strong enough. There was another image that had been trashed during the first round of culling that I ended up going back to. You will see it above titled Timeless Soul, and I pulled it back in because it showed the section of the waterfall down to the water at the bottom. I had already done every one of my isolations in black and white because that was what I felt looked the best for them. I wanted to have one that was in color and looked through the discards for one that might work well in color. I wanted to have a base for it which gave it something to ground it to reality. This makes for a better color photograph because we have more of a sense of what we are looking at and the colors start to make more sense. This is not to say that you don’t know what you are looking at with a black and white photo, but for those, I am asking the viewer to look beyond the actual waterfall and see it as a collection of textures and contrasts. Having no color takes reality out of the picture and replaces it with an abstract quality because we just don’t see in this way naturally. This is why I spent most of last year working on black and white photos as much as I did. I wanted to have a better understanding of when that would work better and when color photography made more sense.
The end result was a total of seven keepers out of the 78 frames shot. While not nearly as high a hit rate as what I have been used to lately, I am still very happy with the number of solid photos that I have come back with. Waterfalls are kind of like sunrises because there are so many repeated frames as you dial in the right shutter speed for the particular waterflow and effect that you want to show. It is just like waiting for the sun to create the colors and light that you are wanting and not wanting to miss what might be the best light as you are waiting it out.
Thank you for joining me on another trek. I hope that you have enjoyed the photos and the change from what has become a rusty norm here lately. As you can tell, I am starting to get back into doing some landscape photography again. I hope to continue that trend because to be really honest, I’m out of practice with it. My hopes are that I will be able to offer a landscape workshop here soon, but I’m working on a place to have it since my preferred location of Doughton Park is still closed off due to road repairs. I’m not sure when it will be opened again, but I am keeping an eye on things. If it takes much longer, I will have to put the workshop off till the Fall so that we aren’t out in the heat of the day which can be rather miserable in the middle of Summer, not to mention that the days are very long with early sunrises and late sunsets.
We will see what happens. Also keep an eye out on my workshops page for pop-up workshops. This is something that I have been wanting to try for a while now. If I can plan a trek with enough advanced notice and at a place with room to host, I would like to just post that I am going to be at a location at a certain time if anyone would like to join me. This will be a free workshop experience where I will be working as I normally do but will be there to point things out and to answer any questions that you might have. The hope is to make workshops more accessible and give folks a chance to try one out in a very relaxed atmosphere without having to make a financial commitment. If it works the way that I hope, I should have several more photographers ready for the real workshop experience having seen how I work in person. Let me know if this is something that would appeal to you and if you might be willing to join me on one of these.
Until next time….
