Reedy River Falls at Night

Reedy River Falls at Night

This was one of the last photographs I took while at Falls Park. There is a spot light that illuminates the falls at night and I liked out it backlit the water going over the falls. This is not an HDR image, it is a simple long exposure of 30 seconds. Long exposures turns water rapids into silky white blurs.

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HDR Gone Wrong

Reedy River Falls at Night

I tried to capture quite a few different angles of the Reedy River Falls and the Liberty Bridge. After the sun had set and the light was turning that beautiful blue, I thought that I would try to get a set of images of the view you see above. Unfortunately, I made several mistakes taking the images to merge into the HDR software. This left me with an HDR image that I didn't really like at all. However, as I was playing around with the various settings I got the image you see above. Everything about it from capture to processing was "wrong", but there is something about this result that I find intriguing.

"Correct" doesn't always give the best results. "Wrong" can sometimes be more interesting. Something to think about I suppose.

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Falls Park in HDR

Falls Park and the West End

Here is another HDR image taken this past weekend. I posted a similar view earlier this year which was taken on the other side of the river. I like this one because of the reflection in the water and the people enjoying the park.

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Reedy River Falls in HDR

Liberty Bridge and Reedy River Falls

This past weekend I went back to Falls Park in Greenville, South Carolina to try to photograph the Liberty Bridge and the waterfalls again. It is one of my favorite places to photograph although I have not yet gotten "the" photograph of the bridge that I want. The bridge's unique lateral, suspension arc and position make it a difficult subject for a photograph to do justice.

This time I went to the park during the late afternoon and stayed into the early night. That was really only about an hour and a half to two hours considering how quickly the sun sets this time of year. I was hoping that would allow me to get good exposures on the sky and the surrounds. However, in actuality, the sun was close to and even sometime even in the frame due to needing a wide angle of view to encompass the entire bridge. I also had some ideas on how to get some better angles of the bridge.

Considering the bright sky and shaded areas of the park, I thought that maybe some HDR (high dynamic range) techniques might work in this situation. I took quite a few sets of bracketed exposures and later merged them using Photomatix Pro software. In the end, I still think I can get a better image. There were several problems with this set of images. I made some mistakes while shooting the brackets. I didn't pay as good attention to the compositions as I should have while shooting them. I also think I need to more practice on the HDR processing.

Still, I did get a few images that I liked even if they are not quite what I ultimately wanted. Practice, practice, practice. It is what makes hobbies fun and it gives me a reason to go back to the park again.

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Playing Around

West End Moon

The weather cleared up and gave me a chance to get back to Falls Park in Greenville. I'm trying to figure out how to get a really good shot of the Liberty Bridge at the park. I tried to get up early enough to get the good morning light. However, I mis-judged the sunrise and travel timing and thus missed the good light. It was still a successful trip though as it gave me a better idea of how the light hits the bridge. I am thinking that it might be best to photograph it in late afternoon for the particular angles I want. The light angle in the morning had the sun in the worst place for the bridge for me.

The shot above is my favorite from the day. It is looking back up to one of the old buildings in the historic West End section of Greenville. I was in Falls Park just below the Falls Cottage for those of you familiar with the area. All processing was done in Lightroom 2 including the black and white conversion. I darkened the sky to bring out the Moon. I also tweaked some of the other color channels to give a faux-IR look to some of the vegetation. Otherwise all of the vegetation looked the same with very little contrast between them.

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