Lynn Valley - Twin Waterfalls (Vancouver)

[jjasc]

Went to Lynn Valley today with my new 30D, 10-22mm, and Feisol 3441 tripod.

I was only able to get a few shots off (I was with relatives and didn't have the time to find all the best places to shoot and compose pictures).

Here are a couple shots I took and the B&W conversions. The shots are of the same waterfall but one has a human element (and slightly different B&W settings). I really wish I had more time to compose and get interesting foreground elements (and better lighting), but I had people shouting at me to leave!

Comments are very welcome as I'm a newbie, heh.

[jjasc]

And the second set

[Weatherboy]

i would have cropped the people at the top, but the photos are overall great! good exposure on the water! :)

[Colyn]

Thanks for sharing ... moving water is always a hit and miss thing for me ... ;)

[willy b]

Wow! when looking at the first 2 i thought they are maybe 1ft if that. Then i look at the 3rd and 4th! Wow what a trick on teh mind, he is either VERY small. Or those falls are huge!

[weka2000]

Nice waterfall. Shame about the people on the bridge. I do like having the bridge in the photo

[curiousgeorge]

The waterfall's beautiful but the darkness of the background ruins the image for me.

[jdizzle]

Nice shots jjasc! How's that lens hood working out for ya? I really like these. Too bad there were people on the bridge.

[jjasc]

Thanks for the comments guys. I was able to hike down the a beautiful little basin with those waterfalls, but right when I was composing, some guys decided they wanted to jump from the bridge into one of the pools. Of course, the tourists flocked to the bridge :(

I'm going to go back tomorrow by myself and recompose. I will also hike along the river and look for other interesting waterfall shots; I'll work on the lighting a bit and maybe add something in the foreground (though it seems to me that most waterfall shots don't have foregrounds). One thing I notice is that it's really hard to shoot senic shots when with other non-photographers. They don't want to wait while you compose, bracket, etc.

This is the first time I've shot any waterfalls. I used a polarizer the first time (to cut reflection in the water) but it gave a bluish cast. I guess I could remove it via photoshop. I ended up using a the non polarized version.

Do you guys have any tips for lighting? Should you underexpose the waterfall or overexpose? The waterfall is in a shady area, but you can still see a bit of blue peeking through the trees above the bridge? Should I try and compose without the sky or use a grad filter to get the blue peeking through? How does the B&W work? better or worse than the color?

Love the wideangle adapter jdizzle. I was going to bring it along, but I figured that I wouldn't need it there. I did use it yesterday during a sunset! Works great and I had tons of people oogle me. I looked and felt like a director for sure!

[jjasc]

I took the suggestions. Changed the contrast so the exposure is not so dark. Cropped out the sky and cloned out the people. Do you think it's improved?

[Stefan A]

I was only able to get a few shots off (I was with relatives and didn't have the time to find all the best places to shoot and compose pictures).


Yeah, I know what that's like. Everyone else will just snap a quick picture and wonder why the hell you can't just take the shot and move on :). But I think you accomplished this pretty well. If you can clone out that one person in your edit, I think you got a winner (unless he's with you). To bad you have that one blown section though.

Stefan