May 22, 2010 / Water

Cascade Falls, Yosemite

Cascade Falls, Yosemite

I absolutely love Cascade falls. Every time I come to Yosemite (at least once a year), I always stop here and photograph these falls.  I experimented with various different exposure times and this was my favorite! I also tried to not do an HDR, but since the water was gushing so fast the shutter had to be fast and the rocks/trees came out really dark.

I should add that I blended the 1/2 sec RAW image back into this HDR for about 1/4 of this photo. I didn’t like that it became too HDR looking and any area with trees had some slight blurring doing to wind moving the branches/leaves. I kept the HDR aspects to get the great color/detail in the rocks. Click to see a non-HDR version.

Nikon D300s w/Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8 ED-IF AF-S:
28mm, f/22, ISO 200, tripod
HDR composed of 3 photos (1/5 sec, 1/3 sec, 1/2 sec) in Photomatix Pro and edited in Photoshop.

FocalLength: 28 mm | ISOSpeedRatings: 200 | Model: Nikon D300S | DateTimeOriginal: 2010:05:21 15:14:43

CategoriesWater Yosemite

Tags2010 beauty California Camp Camping cascade cascade creek D300s falls granite green HDR High Dynamic Range Land Long Exposure May national forest National Park Nikkor Nikon D300s Park Photoblog photography Photomatix Sky snow Trees trip valley Water Waterfall Waterfalls Yosemite Yosemite National Park yosemite valley

Aaron M Written by:

Aaron Meyers is a landscape and wedding photographer living in Silicon Valley, CA. His love of the outdoors makes for frequent forays into the Californian wilds, where he delights in the stunning vistas of Yosemite National Park, Lake Tahoe, Big Sur, and the Pacific Coast.