Tuesday, June 17, 2025
So, I had a little time this morning when I had planned on mowing once again, but the grass was much too wet after some rain overnight. I also noticed when I got up that there was some nice fog rolling in and it looked like there were some clouds in the sky. This was actually going to be a pretty good morning for some photography. I checked with the weather forecasts, and it looked like the fog was going to be leaving in an hour or so, but there would be about 50-75% cloud cover in the lower levels of the sky. That was very promising for some good light and potentially some decent compositions with the sky in the frame. I just had to figure out where to go and what to shoot. That was what I was thinking about as I ate my breakfast and did some of my morning routine.
I wasn’t really coming up with much that I could do quickly, but I remembered that I had wanted to go to Stone Mountain a couple of days ago when the clouds never showed up. The plan had been to hike the lower sections along the stream coming from the main falls. I knew that there were a couple of interesting spots along the trail that I had not photographed in a very long time which I wanted to see what I could manage differently now. Looking at the weather outside of the window it appeared to be just about perfect and with Stone Mountain not being too far away, I knew that not much would likely change before I had a chance to get a few pictures in the bag.
I finished getting dressed and got my waterfall boots on which are pretty much waterproof and headed out the door after grabbing my camera. As I was leaving the driveway, the conditions were looking terrific. There was a good thick overcast with some detail in the sky and the fog was still lingering. In fact, there was a bit of mist falling on my windshield which indicated that this was likely going to be hanging around for a while. Finally, I had a good day to go out and do some photography. The fact that I didn’t have long didn’t really bother me because I have been waiting for good light for quite some time now, and I finally had it. It was every a little cool outside at 67 degrees.
The entire way to Stone Mountain, I was excited over the weather and felt that it was the perfect scenario for some waterfall photography. Now, I wasn’t planning on shooting the actual Stone Mountain Falls because I think it is one of the more boring waterfalls out there since it is basically a very long waterslide with no detail to be had. What I was interested in was the little points along the stream that had some interesting cascades. One of which I had even done as a panorama at one time in the past. With lots of flood watches in effect from all the rain I was pretty sure that the water levels would be about perfect to get some action in the water.
My mood kept getting better until I turned onto John P Frank Hwy which is the route going into Stone Mountain. It was like a Sunday School lesson when the clouds opened up, the sun shone through, the angels sang, and it was a beautiful day. However, for a photographer, this is far from a beautiful day. Here I was about 3 miles from the park entrance and what had been perfect lighting was now the polar opposite with clear blue skies and a blasting sun which was blinding me by the way. I hadn’t driven far, but I was here, and I had Toni’s voice in my head saying that I should go ahead and give it a try because I never know what will present itself unless I’m there. I begrudgingly continued on hoping that the clouds would return. I mean they were super thick and all around, but were clearing right over where I was at. Surely, they would also move back over the sun at some point.
Well, I pulled into the parking lot at the trailhead and took stock of the sky. I could now see no clouds and the temperature had climbed into the 70’s already. I could feel the humidity, but it wasn’t too bad. I grabbed my gear and started hiking to the areas that I wanted to work with. The further I got into the woods, the more dappled the light became, and I was really doubting that I was going to get what I wanted since sunlight is kind of the death of a waterfall or cascade photo when it is under a canopy like this. I decided that if there was anything along the way that presented itself that I would stop and shoot it because I had serious doubts that anything else would work out. The problem was, I found nothing along the way.
In fact, the early bits of the stream that I had planned on stopping and photographing had some fatal problems as well. The first one suffered from a down tree that blocked the composition. The next one was in too strong light from the sun. There were a couple of others that suffered from the trees getting too close to the water and creating a very claustrophobic feeling within the composition. The water levels were not where I had expected and, in some cases, looked like drought conditions. There were maybe a half dozen spots that I walked past which I had wanted to work with, and I was seeing nothing that would take their places. I was also getting very aware that the temperature was climbing as was the humidity. I was sweating pretty good at this point and my shirt was already soaked. It was about this time that I started to think about a video that I had watched just last night by Gavin Hardcastle, and he was talking about bringing a fresh shirt to put on after the hike was over to keep you from standing there in a soaking wet shirt. I had laughed at him when he said that.
Now, I was hearing him laughing at me. Not just a little snicker, but a full-on chortle, leading into a guffaw. I was starting to imagine just how miserable I would be if I stopped to take some photos, and I was also thinking about how cold it was going to be with the A/C on the ride home. It had only been a mile of hiking as well, and I wasn’t at the furthest point that I planned to go by a long shot. I just sucked it up and continued to swim through the air which is something that only Southeaster US residents fully understand.
I did make it to the one section of cascades that I think is the most impressive along the stream and it appeared to be roughly 95% in the shadows, but I knew that the sun was going to be coming up over the hill to the left soon enough. The waterflow was excellent and the trees were mostly out of the way. In short, this was what I had hoped to see, and I had decent lighting on it for the time being. I quickly shimmied down the embankment and got positioned on the flat rock by the cascades. In the past, I had stood in the stream to shoot this cascade, but the water was a bit too deep for that to happen today. I chose my standard zoom for the composition as well as a polarizer. After setting up the tripod on the corner of the rock, I started working on the composition. This was too high up and I needed to get in a bit closer.
The solution was to drop one of the legs off the rock into the water while the other two were splayed out allowing for a moderate height above the rock, but closer to the falls. This looked much better in the viewfinder, but at 24mm I wasn’t able to get the full set of cascades in the shot. I quickly swapped out the lens for my 16-35mm which gave me the composition that I was after at around 19-20mm. The composition was looking really good, and I liked it better than the panorama that I had shot here before. I made some quick test exposures to see what shutter speed I liked best for the water and then started to shoot in earnest.
By this time, the sun was starting to peak through the trees, and I was seeing shafts of light across the upper level of the cascades. I rolled with it, but eventually it got too bright to really ignore. At this point, I had to make a decision. I liked the composition so much that I didn’t want to let it go, so I decided to incorporate the light by reducing the amount of polarization by a bit to bring a bit of glare to the edge of the upper level. This made the streak of sunlight make a lot more sense and I was able to get a few more exposures.
By the time I was happy with what I had shot, I had 16 exposures of basically the same composition with some slight changes here and there. It was frames five and eight that I liked the best as these were before the sunlight got too bright, and after I had the exposure time figured out. I liked them each, but for different reasons. I had been going back and forth about whether do to this in color or black and white because I thought that it looked great in both presentations. The answer now seemed very simple. I would do one in color and one in black and white.
I chose to work the one with the extra sunlight in black and white because it seemed a bit more complicated with the extra light, but in black and white, that extra light would just be some added visual interest which worked well for the composition. The edits actually went pretty quick on both of these, and I thought that this composition and subject worked very well in both presentations. I was glad that I had stuck around after the sunlight started to shine across the scene because that really made the black and white photo make the most sense for me.
The sunlight was getting stronger and eventually, I decided that the light wasn’t getting any better and I could see no evidence of clouds moving into the area at all. It was time to move along and try to find something else. I went ahead and finished the hike to the base of the main falls where I was struck by the blahness of it all once again. I always wonder why I bother every time I see this waterfall. It just does nothing at all for me, and one of these days I will learn that and remember it. At least I didn’t have to do the nearly 400 steps to arrive at this conclusion, so there are positives to keep in mind. I was soaked to the bone now, and there were only a few inches of my shorts that were dry. I was hot and miserable. My camera bag even was looking like I had been in a rain storm because it was all damp, even the side pockets.
I started to head back to the truck happy that I had at least gotten something with the camera. When I came to the fork in the trail for the lower and middle falls, I decided to take that and refresh my memory about these two waterfalls which hadn’t really impressed me the first time I had seen them. One of the stream crossings was too deep to mess with considering the light was not all that great, so I only went to the first of the two falls. I was hoping that this wasn’t the waterslide which I knew was not a good subject for a photo.
As I approached the roaring water, I could see that this was the waterslide and figured that was par for the course. The light wasn’t good on it, so I didn’t spend a lot of time considering my shooting options. I said something under my breath, and I saw some big movement in the woods on the other side of the falls. I caught a glimpse of a large black mass running up the hill. There was no doubt that this was a black bear, and I had scared it. Considering that I was about 100 feet away, that was probably the closest I have ever been to a bear, so that was pretty cool. Cooler than the waterfall, that was for sure.
There was no reason to stick around, so I went back down the trail painfully aware that sweat was dripping off of my hands as I walked. Spider webs were fusing with my beaded sweat to form this odd covering that I wasn’t able to shed at all. I needed to take a break from the hike and found my reason after a bit more walking. There was a patch of ferns growing just off the trail with some sunlight hitting them. I also noticed that by some of the ferns was a bit of deadfall with an interesting hole, not to mention the fact that it was covered in green moss which made it stand out from the forest floor.
This was going to be a good photo if I could get a composition made. It was up on a slight ridge, so I chose to use that to my advantage and shoot from low down and slightly under the ferns. For this, I grabbed my telephoto lens to really isolate what I loved about the scene. I left the polarizer off because I kind of liked how the sun was reflecting off of the leaves and didn’t want to change that any. As I was framing up the shot, I realized that the lens was fogging over. Now, neither of my other two lenses had done this, but this lens has more length to it which means there is more air that has to acclimate compared to the other lenses. At any rate, the front element was completely fogged over.
I pulled out a lens wipe and took care of it as I finished composing the shot. By the time I was ready to shoot, the lens had fogged over once again. I wiped and then made the exposure. It looked really good despite the aggravation of keeping the lens clear. I would repeat this another five times as I changed the composition slightly and then tried the composition horizontally. I had expected to find the lens clear after the first defogging, but it continued to completely fog over after every exposure. Eventually, I got tired of the game and the lens wipe was saturated with my own sweat as my hands were still dripping. It was futile and I was done.
After packing up my gear, I finished the hike back to the truck where once again, I was wishing that I had listened to the advice from Gavin’s video from last night. Fortunately, I did have a large towel that I could put in the seat to keep my drenched self from sitting directly on the leather upholstery. I cranked the A/C all the way home and just barely started to get cold. I was at least dry when I got home. Well, my arms and head were dry. My clothes still looked like I had fallen into the stream….three times.
Out of 22 frames shot, I ended up with three keepers which really surprised me. The fern shot, it was the first out of the series, so I should have just stopped while I was ahead. At any rate, I am glad that you have chosen to come along for the ride. I do hope that you were able to do it from the comfort of some air conditioning. There is no question in my mind why this is my least favorite time of year to go out for photography. There is just no reason to be this uncomfortable just to be outside. The joke is on me though. Tomorrow, I will be outside washing the truck and mowing the yard. I’m already dreading it.
Until next time….
