[/caption] Silver Falls State Park offers 10 spectacular waterfalls that are showcased as you hike the 7.5 mile of trails that span the 9,000 acre park. However, Upper North Falls is actually off the beaten path but only a .2 mile hike from the main trail. Unless you pay close attention to the hiking map you may miss the waterfall or just decide that it’s not worth the short hike. It’s actually one of the most impressive waterfalls within the park and it’s set in a very private and surreal setting. As you can see in this photo the trail literally stops at the waterfall and in order to get a really great shot you need to carefully walk along the slippery and unpredictable creek below. The lighting can also be a real challenge since its so well forested that only a fraction of the suns rays reaches along the falls. Spring is usually the best time to photograph since the sunlight is a little more predictable and the lush vegetation hides some of the black basalt that can wash out the picture due to the low light. I took this shot on 5/7/10 on a very sunny morning and the time was 7:48am. I was facing due east just as the sun was directly behind the falls but as you can see the light was still limited. I was using my Canon T1i along with my Canon 18-55mm lens. I attached my ND8 along with my warming filter. Without the ND filter I wouldn’t have been able to set the camera mode to shutter priority. I was trying to ensure that the field of view was high so everything was in focus but I also wanted to make sure that the waterfall was the main subject in the picture so I set the focal length to 24mm. I was using my tripod, bubble level and remote switch and ended up lowering my tripod just enough so I could make it as though the creek was rushing into the photo but without reducing the field of view. The aperture was at F-14 and the shutter was at 1 second. The ISO was at 100 and the white balance was at +0.3. You could spend an entire day cris-crossing the trails in order to take several different photos of the waterfalls within the park. I’ve actually hiked the entire trail twice in one day so I could get the morning shots and then the early evening shots in order to take advantage of the changing light. Each waterfall literally changes its personality as the light changes.