Image of the Week

Burney Falls

Image of the Week

Long Exposure – Monochrome

Image Considerations

This waterfall image was taken at the McArthur-Burney Falls Memorial State Park. The park is one of the true gems of northern California, with Burney falls as the primary attraction. There is plenty more to see in addition to the falls if you enjoy hiking, camping, and time on a lake.

The trail to the main view of Burney falls is something almost anyone can do. As always, take some water, as you may be walking longer than expected. The trail is not long, but the views can be so good, you may not want to leave.

This is not the main falls, but a small section off to the side that you will see walking along the trail. Be sure to keep your eyes open along the trail and to take in all the amazing views. Some of the small details are the most beautiful.

Image Lighting

This was taken mid day, but in a shadowed area along the trail. The shadows added to the feel of the setting, but the mid day sun created some challenges with the light. Unfortunately, I had left my circular polarizer in the car, so I had to adapt to the light as best as I could. Adapting to the light was largely about adjusting the angle of the image, while still capturing the portion of Burney falls that I wanted.

In this small section of Burney falls, some of the details that were most interesting to me, were the not just the main flow of water, but also the small ribbons of water coming down from the upper areas. Not only do they give a feel for how much water is flowing, but I think they add to the image.

Camera and Settings

I shot this with my Canon 1Ds Mark III and Canon 28-135 IS USM lens, mounted on my ProMaster tripod. I did not have my remote trigger with me on this trip, so used a 2 second shutter delay to help ensure not having any camera shake during the exposure. This section of the trail has a good size stone wall that is wide enough to stand a tripod on without extending the legs. I used this as an advantage, keeping the camera close enough to eye level to make camera adjustments easy. It also allowed me to not block the trail with my tripod. I have lost track of the number of times I have had my tripod bumped by people busy looking at their phones.

The only part to be very careful of when putting a tripod on a wall like this is the wall is there for a reason. In this case, a significant drop down to some rocks, that would be inaccessible if anything fell. Because of this, even when I have my camera on the tripod, I tend to still have my strap around my neck. Nobody wants that kind of accident with their camera gear.

My goal for this image was to get just the right amount of blur in the water. The trick is that there is no real definition for ‘just the right amount of blur’. It is totally a look and feel thing that each photographer needs to decide for themselves. I end up experimenting with exposure times to adjust the blur.

Without any filters to help control the amount of light, I used the aperture to help control the exposure time. For this I wanted added DOF due to the angle of my view of the falls, but also increased the aperture to lengthen the exposure.

  • 80mm focal length
  • f/18 aperture
  • 1/2 second exposure
  • +0.3 exposure bias
  • 100 ISO

Editing Inspiration

This image became a labor of love in the post processing. When I started editing, I went down the road of having a natural scene. As beautiful as that was, it simply did not feel right for this image.

I started adjusting the exposure and colors until I realized the image was screaming to be in black and white. Along with that realization came another – the details that mattered were all in the water flows. The foliage a around the water in some ways detracted from the water. With that, I started to pull back on the exposure in the areas around the water flows. This gave the water more emphasis.

After that point, it became an interesting process of trying to find a balance for the highlights. In almost any long exposure water image like this, there can be blown out areas. Although not a totally bad thing, you don’t want the over exposed areas overwhelming the overall image. I was guided into a solution, thanks to a key member of my mentorship group.

Adding a layer in Photoshop, I used the lasso tool to select the blown out areas, then used a content aware fill. This used the surrounding areas to fill in the blow out region, but also took away the needed details. To find a balance between blown out and missing details, I adjusted the opacity of the added layer to blend the two layers. This allowed the blown out regions to retain the critical details, while not appearing as blown out.

After that learning process, the final adjustments were in how much of the highlights should be brought out. I used the brush tool in Lightroom to accomplish this. Somewhere between a labor of love, and learning many new skills, this image presented me with many challenges. Regardless of the challenges, I am thrilled with the end result.