McWay Falls, Cove, Fog (Long Exposure)

McWay Falls, Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park, Big Sur, CA

Note: Photograph has been updated after the recent issues with Lightroom.  The Develop module desaturated the actual colors of the photo resulting in oversaturated colors in the actual edit.

There is a difference for me when it comes to a vacation versus a photography trip.  On a photography trip, locations are planned throughout the day on a semi-rigid schedule. Vacationing is putting down a list of places I would like to visit on a given day and with the hope that we will hit a majority of those.  Vacations are more relaxing (and there’s usually good food and restaurants involved), but a bit of hit and miss on the photography.

That is the reason we ended up at McWay Falls in mid-afternoon.  Granted, I had driven through the area on my way back home from Southern California 6 months ago at around the same time of day and did not take a single photograph.  At least there was a bit of fog this time.

Faced with the dreaded midday sun, it was time to put the ND-110 (10-stop filter) in use to take long exposure photographs.  Shutter speed for this shot would have been 1/50 sec, but with the filter, it was extended out to 20 seconds to achieve the same exposure.  This causes the waterfall to look like a single silky stream and smooths out the ocean surface, and waves coming onshore and into the rocks.  There wasn’t much more I could do with the light at this time, so a total of three shots and I was done.  The burden of a screw-in ND-110 filter is that the filter must be removed to refocus if the focal length changed, then screwed back on for the shot.

Anyhow, I wished I had remembered to use this filter about an hour later for the Bixby Creek Bridge, Fog, B&W photograph.  I might have captured some interested fog movement.  There’s always next time, right?

Below is the original photo from Lightroom that had issues until the uninstall/reinstall of LR:

(BAD EXPORT) McWay Falls, Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park, Big Sur, CA

EXIF data: Nikon D7000, patterned metering mode, 26mm, ISO 100, 20 sec, f/10

McWay Falls, Cove, Fog.  Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park, Big Sur, California. July 1, 2012. © Copyright Steven Tze – all rights reserved.

~ by Steven Tze on July 5, 2012.