Great Falls National Park + my water technique

Great Falls National Park - Tony Eckersley

EXIF:

Taken with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II.

• Exposure: 0.6 sec
  
• Aperture: f/16.0
  
• Focal Length: 70 mm
  
• ISO Speed: 50
  

A wintery photo I took a few weekends ago on my way home from a meeting… With Great Falls National Park being the closest park to home, I like to stop in when I can, especially at this time of year where it is very quiet, peaceful, yet rough in the conditions of the falls.

There is a little bit of Post Production done to this photo, so let me explain a little:

This is 3 exposures combined, but not a HDR. I like to experiment with different exposures and water to create interesting textures, so what you see here is -2 / 0 / +2 overlapped to generate this unique water feel. The water has a very choppy feel to it, while still containing that milky feel from a long exposure. For a place like this I feel it is perfect to show the rough conditions and bring the viewer more into the picture. I generally use the Luminosity blending mode, mixed with lighten and darken. It’s all part of bringing the water to life and really pushes it away from the results you see with one exposure.

I boosted the colors in the sky a little too. The winter sun set had created a nice purple hue, but the blues had been washed out a little, so I upped the blue saturation a little.

I also added clarity to give the rocks a bit of a punch, but the sky exposure and water exposure come from using a grad ND filter (0.9) which helps bring out the shadows in the rocks.