Return to Uvas

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After another heavy rain, I drove back to Uvas County Park, this time on a Friday. My plan was to photograph just this one fall, which I couldn't get to last week because of all the people. It is at the start of the Waterfall Loop Trail and photographing it requires standing on a very narrow bridge and then moving off (tripod and all) every time a hiker wants to get across. Last Sunday, I put it off until the afternoon, hoping that by then most people would be gone; and they were, but it had also started to rain, so I had to skip it. On this day, I had the trail to myself. I like the curve and the sense of turbulence in the water.

I was so enthralled with the water (again) that I continued up the trail. Swanson's Creek was flowing faster and fuller than ever. New falls had been created from the water flowing off the hillsides, and the water was brown with silt. This helped the photography. Very little sunlight makes its way into the canyon, so the brown water helped balance the contrast between the water and the dark rocks & creek bank, and it brought out the texture of the surging water. It was moving so fast that without the color, the water would have been a white blur. In this photo I like that the boulder appears on the verge of tumbling out of the picture

This last photo, of Black Rock Falls is a composite of 5 horizontal photos that were stitched together in Photoshop Elements. I probably could have included the whole fall if I had switched to a wide angle lens, but I was perched on a small patch of uneven, precarious ground and getting wet from the spray: not good conditions for exposing a camera sensor.

My quick trip to the park turned into a 3 hour hike and photo shoot, and even then, I was reluctant to leave. What is it about moving water that is so compelling?

Scroll down to the previous post to see last weeks photos.