water vail
May, 2014Views
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Same photographer See allBehind The Lens
Behind The Lens
Location
This photo is taken in Bavaria, Germany, a couple of years ago. In advance, I was investigating the exact location of this beautiful waterfall. The problem here is, it's located in a nature preservation zone approximately an hours hike away from the tiny parking ground and it's strictly forbidden to enter the zone because the moss is so sensitive. But, at that time, it was allowed to come near and see it from outside a barrier. Nevertheless, the hike was quite dangerous because the trail led through a couple of meadows with cows and down a steep hill to reach the river at the ground where a small waterfall sounds in the river. (don't ask me for the names or the exact location, I won't tell them. Nowaday access is denied completely because of the misbehaviour of some photographers who ruined parts of the ground)Time
The image is taken nearly at noon mid of October during a gray and drizzling day. The advantage of these weather conditions was, there are no harsh shadows.Lighting
It's an all-natural light softened by a quite thick cloud blanket.Equipment
I took the image with my Nikon D600 full-frame DSLR with the 24-120 f4 at 85mm mounted on my tripod. (ISO 100, f11, 2s, aperture mode)Inspiration
It was planned to visit that waterfall because of its beauty. It's know with the name bridal veil waterfall and I have to admind, the association is correct. Although it's hard to get there for only one photo, it's worth the effort. In the meantime, access is restricted even more because too many photographers were not accepting the nature preservation barriers. It's definitely true, you could get other (maybe better?) photos without the barrier, but at the same time, the beauty would be gone because the moss on the ground would be destroyed.Editing
My post-processing was mostly done before releasing the shutter: in these situations, I'm using a Pol-filter in front of my lens to get more vibrant colors. An additional benefit of the weather in combination with the Pol-filter was the extension of the shutter speed to get the wonderful silky water. Thus, it's quite an easy image. The raw development was done with wonderful but unfortunately discontinued Capture-NX2.In my camera bag
The contents of my bag varies greatly, depending on the reason for a specific trip. Usually, I now shoot with a full-frame D610 For my travel photography I have a 24-120, an 80-400 (sometimes 70-300 to save weight), and a fisheye lens. For certain trips, the equipment is completed by a 12mm or a 20mm ultra wide-angle lens or a teleconverter. For my model shootings, I only use prime lenses of 50, 85 and 105mm and sometimes 20mm. They are all f1.8, expect the 105 which has f2.8. For my wildlife photography I'm using a D500 usually with the Tamron 150-600 G2. I have a remote shutter release, 2 additional batteries and 9 SD cards (1 * 128, 3 * 64, 2 * 16, 3 * 8 GB).Feedback
I'd always recommend, paying very much attention to the available light and balance it right during the shooing. It's way easier to photograph it right from the beginning, then correcting it in post procession. There's much more work to be done and the image quality might decrease when changing too much in post-processing. Plan your trips ahead with the weather-forecast in mind. And, try to learn to 'read' the clouds and the other 'signs' in the sky proposing the weather to come soon.
