Fall is now upon us and the foliage is starting to show their brilliant colors and the Pacific Northwest puts on one of the best displays! Lately, the Pacific Northwest has been getting hammered with rain and wind storms but the weather is now starting to turn cooler with parts of fog. This is one of the perfect ingredients to cook up some awesome Fall colors. The only thing missing is some sunny weather with just a dash of warmer temperatures. Luckily, we are predicted to get just that so be prepared for the foliage to put on a heck of a display over the next few weeks. Dust off your lens and make sure to remove your CIR-PL and don’t forget to either turn on your IS or bring your tripod because you can plan on having a pretty spectacular experience. However, if you plan on visiting any of the numerous waterfalls, you will want to bring a tripod but if you are going to be walking along some of the many neighborhoods or state parks, you can get away without a tripod as long as you can keep a steady hand and have a very good understanding of your camera’s settings. I always make sure to remove my CIR-PL, turn on the IS and mount my bubble level on the camera, in order to ensure that the photo is always level.
Tag Archives: Autumn
Multnomah Falls, OR
[/caption] Fall foliage is abundant along the Columbia River Gorge which makes for some spectacular photographs when you can include any of the numerous waterfalls. The Fall season arrives early in the Gorge but the Fall colors usually don’t arrive until just before Winter. This can create a great scene since the area is inundated with moister which allows the waterfalls to swell. You can then take advantage of the Autumn colors along with the movement of the creeks and waterfalls. I took this shot early in the morning and the skies were well overcast and there was a light rain coming down. Due to the glare being created by the overcast and overexposed sky as well as from the glare from the waterfall I resorted to attaching my ND8 filter to my Canon 18-55mm lens. I also attached my warming filter in order to capture the warm colors of the foliage. Because I set the Shutter Priority to 10 seconds the aperture was at F-25. I also set the ISO to 200 but the white balance to -1.3. The 100 ISO setting was too low so I ended up having to increase it to 200. However, I was able to reduce the white balance in order to combat the higher ISO. I wanted to get as much of the waterfall in the photo so I stood near the lodge and set the focal length at 24mm. I used my tripod, bubble level and remote switch to ensure there was no camera shake. You can see how much the trees were moving due to the wind being created by the waterfall. You can really get soaked when trying to cross the bridge and this day was no exception. I really wanted to create a long exposure in order to show just how awesome the waterfall is.