Three viewpoints on Mystic falls

Last week I visited hidden Mystic falls which is close to Telluride, Colorado. It is an amazing box canyon waterfall that you have to scramble a bit for to reach. There are many pages on the web that detail how to reach it. The best is probably found here. I rode to the trailhead in my little Subaru without any issue but I might be a lot less careful than most so hiking the last part is not a big deal if you need to especially since the descent to the falls is really quite short. I have three favorite images to share that were taken at different angles and focal lengths.

The Mystic river.
Nikon D600, Nikon 14-24 mm at 14mm, f/11, three shot HDR at 1/50, 1/30, and 1/15s.

Mystic streams.
Nikon D600, Nikon 14-24 mm at 24mm, f/16, three shot HDR at 1/13, 1/6, and 1/3s.

Levels.
Nikon D600, Nikon 24-85 mm at 50mm, f/16, 1/6s.

My favorite is the tighter composition at the end but it does omit some of the context. I am guessing this place is going to be awesome in fall! Lastly as a bonus, here is a 360 degrees panorama of the place. Follow the "view on google maps link to see it in full screen glory and don't forget to look all around!

Most memorable images from 2016

1. January 31

Pristine. Sunrise at Dream Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park.
Nikon D600, Tokina 16-28 mm f/2.8 at 22mm, F/16, 1/3s, ISO 100.
It's a great idea to look back upon a year and choose one's favorite images. I've been going through my images from this year over the last few weeks and, although the year is not over yet, have come up with some favorites or most memorable images. Some of these are not necessarily the best images but they are images that I am fond of. The image above for example was taken on a solo snowshoe hike in #RMNP Jan 31, 2016 where I encountered deeper snow conditions than I'd ever seen in the park. I was the first person up there with pristine snow everywhere (also unplowed road to the trailhead ;-) ) and it was gorgeous. The sunrise didn't materialize much but I got some good images anyway such as the iconic tree above. I also generated several photosphere panoramas that you can see on Google maps. Be sure to drag your mouse all around as these are fully immersive 360x180 spherical panoramas and they really convey what it is like to be there.

• Here is for example Dream Lake. 
• This is my other favorite tree that you can find somewhat above Lake Emerald.
• This is me at Lake Emerald.
• On the way to Lake Hayiaha.

You can find more images from Dream lake, Emerald Lake and Lake Hayiaha in the links.

2. February 21

A river of rock. Calhan Paint Mines.
Nikon D600, Tokina 16-28 mm f/2.8 at 22mm, F/8, 1/15s, ISO 100. Focus stack from 5 images to get everything in pristine focus front to back.
I visited the stunning and fairly unknown Calhan Paint mines that are hidden in a little town-run interpretive park for a sunrise on Feb 21, 2016. Since the last time that I was there 100's of very impressive wind mills were added all around it but luckily the views were not spoiled. This is truly an extraordinary place and well worth a visit if you're ever near Colorado Springs. You can find an immersive panorama that I made the same morning in this link.

3. March 13

Radiance. Matthews/Winters park.
Stitch from 4 images from Nikon 1 J4, 10-30 mm f/3.5-5.6 at 10 mm, f/4, 1/400s, f/4.0
I took this photograph on a short hike with my wife and son over Dakota ridge. I ride this on my bike often and it is a beautiful trail. Here we were hiking back to the trailhead and we came upon this scene with clouds lit by sunset light. I often like struggling trees as you can tell.

4. May 13

Golden Dawn. Chautauqua Park, Boulder open space.
Nikon D600, Tokina 16-28 mm f/2.8 at 16mm, F/8, 1/30s, ISO 800. Focus stacked.
I was scouting Chautauqua park on May 13, 2016 for a sunrise photography class I would lead the next morning. This is one of the vantage points I identified there. The flowers are fantastic in spring in this place. The next morning was rain and fog the whole time which made for very different but still very interesting images as you can see next. I also hiked up to the royal arch this morning and made a few immersive panoramas there that can be experienced here and here.

5. May 14

Forest scene. Chautauqua Park, Boulder open space.
Nikon D600, Nikon 24-85 mm f/3.5-4.5 at 72mm, F/8, 1/80s, ISO 450.
I got many images like this the morning of May 14. So different from the day before.

6. June 24

Fairytale Forest. Boulder Brook, Rocky Mountain National Park.
Nikon D600, Tokina 16-28 mm f/2.8 at 16mm, F/16, 1s, ISO 100.

This little micro landscape scene can be found along one of my very favorite places in Rocky - Boulder Brook trail. It is reached from the Storm pass trailhead and the nicest parts are hidden from view from the trail but you can easily hear the little waterfalls. In autumn this place gets covered with aspen leaves that make it look like somebody scattered gold coins all around.

7. June 24

Longs glow. Rocky Mountain National Park.
Nikon D600, Nikon 24-85 mm f/3.5-4.5 at 48mm, F/16, 1/3s, ISO 100.
The same day as I shot the small forest scene above I drove up to Forest Canyon overlook along Trail Ridge road and enjoyed sunset as it hit Longs peak. Truly a magnificent end of the day.

8. June 25

The ancient one. Mount Evans.
Nikon D600, Tokina 16-28 mm f/2.8 at 18mm, F/16, 1/40s, ISO 100.
This image is from a sunrise on Mount Evans in the Mt. Goliath area. When the sunrise didn't materialize much, I hiked around and followed the trail up the mountain and found this tree being backlit by soft morning light. I made the sun peek through some holes in the tree branches and stopped down to f/16 to cause the sunstar to appear. This lens also has the fascinating property that next to sunstars it will show nice diffraction rainbows that are easily visible if you look at the print and even in this web sized version. You can see this image in the rotunda of the Colorado state capitol building for a few more months.

9. July 16

Ice Lake Dusk. Ice Lakes Basin, San Juan Mountains, Colorado.
Nikon D600, Tokina 16-28 mm f/2.8 at 18mm, F/16, 20s, ISO 100.
This image was taken on a night I spent in Ice Lakes Basin near Silverton. This is a stunningly beautiful place with seas of wildflowers, gorgeous glacially fed lakes, and rugged peaks. I was here to photograph star trails as you can see in this image. I like this image a bit better than the star trails image due to the streakiness of the clouds. If you look carefully you will spot a yellow tent on the shelf on the right. I made a time lapse of the individual images in the star trails image but I haven't shared this anywhere yet.

10. September 30

Ephemeral Glow. Bierstadt Moraine, Rocky Mountain National Park.
Nikon D600, Nikon 24-85 mm f/3.5-4.5 at 34mm, F/11, 1/40s, ISO 400.
This image is from a wonderful fall sunset hike I took with my son up to Lake Bierstadt and back. We hiked up the Moraine which was covered in aspen trees that were in full fall regalia. I took many images but this is one of my favorites for sure. Afterwards we had a great mexican dinner in Estes Park.

11. September 30

Night on the Moraine. Bierstadt Moraine, Rocky Mountain National Park.
Nikon D600, Nikon 24-85 mm f/3.5-4.5 at 24mm, F/8, 30s, ISO 100.
This is from the same fall sunset hike as the previous image. This was way after sunset when we were hiking down. The very long exposure caused the lights from one of the RMNP busses to smear out causing the little S in the center. The dusk light really deepened the color of the fall leaves.

12. October 23

Curving. Chasm Lake, Rocky Mountain National Park.
Stitched from 3 images. Nikon D600, Tokina 16-28 mm f/2.8 at 16mm, F/16, 1/6s, ISO 100.
On October 23 I hiked up to Chasm Lake together with my good friend Jean-David to see the sunrise. We discovered many small patches of ice on the edge of the lake and I used this one as a nice foreground element. The blobs are drops hanging from the bottom of the ice. This was a glorious morning in an amazing place. I also created an immersive panorama that you can experience in this link.

I hope you enjoyed this series of images as much as I enjoyed showing them to you! Happy holidays and a happy new year to all.

Andrews Creek

In the process of cleaning up my Lightroom catalog I am running into 100's of images I love. Here are two images from Andrews Creek in Rocky Mountain National Park that I took on July of 2015. I published one image from here but have never shown two others that I love. These are both at the point where the semisecret trail (it's not marked and disappears several times in the trees so you'll need some route finding skills) to Andrews glacier takes off from the main trail that leads to Lake of Glass and Sky Pond in Loch Vale. This is a gorgeous area in Rocky Mountain National Park well worth the hike. The first image is one I published before but never highlighted. The second and third are ones that I just discovered and actually like even more. I hope you enjoy these images.

Downfall.
Nikon D600. Tokina 16-28mm f/2.8 at 16 mm, f/13, 0.8s, ISO 100.

Jumbled.
Nikon D600. Tokina 16-28mm f/2.8 at 16 mm, f/16, 0.8s, ISO 100.

From hither.
Nikon D600. Tokina 16-28mm f/2.8 at 16 mm, f/16, 0.8s, ISO 100.

Gate keepers

It's been a daunting task to keep up with the images that are being ingested into Lightroom. I have a set of images to share from the Great Sand Dunes, which I visited back in April. I've only shared some fully immersive panos from that trip but I haven't shared much in the way of actual images. See an example of one of such immersive panoramas here. Worse, I haven't been able to share many of my images from a trip to White Pocket in 2014! The best images from that trip except for the ones in the link are still locked up in my Lightroom catalog. At the same time, some revelations in digital imaging as well as the new panorama tools in Lightroom have made me go back to even earlier times. The image I share below for example was taken on October 31 in 2009 in Zion National Park while exploring the Narrows with my friend Dave. We were there just on the cusp of fall color hitting and once in a while we would find trees in the canyon that were in color like the one on the right here while the one on the left is still mostly green. We were in full wetsuits and at places we had to hold our gear above our heads as the water was near our shoulders. I was reminded of these images and the trip while hearing about the tragic deaths that occurred in the slot canyons in this beautiful park just recently. The image below is a stitched high resolution composite of 9 images along the gorgeous Virgin river in the park just a few days ago. I shot this with my D300 camera using the kit lens using my old homemade panoramic head. I stitched this using the new panoramic tools in Lightroom and edited and cropped. The native image is 7530x7530 pixels or 57 megapixels as I cropped from the full stitched image for a better composition. I hope you enjoy the image

Gate Keepers. Zion National Park. Oct 31, 2009. Stitch from 9 images, Nikon D300, Nikon 18-55mm f3.5-5.6 at 35mm, f/16, 2.0s, ISO 200.

Indian Peaks morning

Last weekend, I went on a short sunrise hike with friends from the cmc Dan and Jon at the Arapahoe Pass Trail in the Indian Peaks Wilderness. We waited for sunrise at a very steep waterfall that had quite a few flowers around it. Unfortunately there was so much wind there that all the flowers were getting blurred in all our pictures, so I have 100 images with blurs where the flowers are supposed to be. Most of the high resolution stitches I tried to do at sunrise didn't work for that same reason either. Also, the clouds prevented the sun from rising at its scheduled time and it didn't show for 20 minutes after sunrise. I did come away with some images I like though that I'll post over time. Here are a few to start. As always, click on the images for a bigger version.

Arapahoe Pass Trail Sunrise. Buy a print. On flickr. On Facebook. On Google+.
Nikon D600, Tokina 16-28mm f/2.8 at 16mm, f/22, 1/6s, ISO 100.

I was standing in the waterfall to take this image. Luckily my boots are still fairly waterproof. Below is the same waterfall looking up. I also have an interesting image of about the same viewpoint taken on the way back down in different light that I will post later.

From hither. Buy a print. On flickr. On Facebook. On Google+.
Nikon D600, Tokina 16-28mm f/2.8 at 16mm, f/22, 1/8s, ISO 100.

There were enormous amounts of flowers along the trail. Here is a cluster of Columbines that I really liked.

Stack. Buy a print. At flickr. On facebook.
Nikon D600, Nikon 70-200mm f/4 at 140mm, f/4, 1/80s, ISO 400.

Spectators. Buy a print. On flickr. On Facebook. On Google+.
Nikon D600, Tokina 16-28mm f/2.8 at 16mm, f/22, 1/10s, ISO 100.

I have a lot more to share from this very pleasant morning. In the mean time, I'll share with you this map with the geomapped locations of all the pictures I took that morning on it. I love this feature in Lightroom. I generate gpx tracks using my phone. Import the tracks into Lightroom and just autotag the entire series of images in one click. Couldn't be simpler.

Boulder Brook in rain

I went back to Boulder Brook, this time in summer to see if it is nice with some flowers around it. Indeed it is, however, it was raining hard when I was there. I also needed to shoot a series of images for the presentation I did for the CMC photoclub about moving water where I change the shutter speed and show the effect on moving water, so despite incessant rain and mosquitoes, I made the series and here is one shot from Boulder Brook. I have been to this magical place many times before and it is always fantastic. This time is no exception. Unfortunately I dropped my Tokina 16-28mm f/2.8 lens' cap and it got carried of by the stream. I haven't located a replacement yet.

Wetness in the forest. Buy a print. On flickr. On Facebook. On Google+.
Nikon D600, Tokina 16-28 mm f/2.8 at 17 mm, ISO 400, f/16, 1/5s.

Fish creek trail waterfalls

A few weeks ago, I went on a hike along fish creek near Steamboat Springs.
Upper fish creek falls detail. Buy a print. On flickr. On facebook.
Nikon D600, Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 at 130mm, f/16, 1.8s, 3 stops ND filter.

This is a detail of the falls I came accross after hiking a while along the trail. This is sort of a mini version of the really well known Fish Creek Falls that is just a short hike from the trailhead. Reaching this took quite some slipping and sliding over icy trails and wading through surprisingly deep snow in places. At the end there was some scrambling over very icy rocks before suddenly this waterfall opened up. I thought this was a nice opportunity to try out the 70-200 mm f/2.8 VRII I had rented from lensrentals.com to play with. That lens is just extraordinary in sharpness and handling and apart from the weight (especially annoying on a long hike such as this) it is ideal. I am looking forward to trying the much lighter 70-200 f/4 that just came out. Below is the context for this shot:

Upper fish creek falls. Buy a print. On Facebook.
High resolution compisite, stitched from 9 images from Nikon D600, Nikkor 24-85 mm f/3.5-4.5 at 50mm, f/16, 0.5s, ISO 100, 3 stop ND filter.

I tried pressing on a little higher than this place but was thwarted by very deep snow that was hard to get through without snowshoes, so I decided to turn around and photograph the well-known Fish Creek Falls closer to the trailhead around sunset time. At the bridge, I jumped the railing and scrambled over the rocks and jumped the creek a few times and arrived at a secluded area around the corner where I came accross this:

Seclusion. Buy a print. On flickr. On Facebook.
Nikon D600, Nikkor 24-85 mm f/3.5-4.5 at 38mm, f/16, 0.5s, ISO 100

I searched around for some different views and took many intimate images of the ice. I like the following image:

Cascade. Buy a print. On flickr. On Facebook.
Nikon D600, Nikkor 24-85 mm f/3.5-4.5 at 24mm, f/16, 0.6s, ISO 100

I like the hint of the sunset light in the top here. I also took some more conventional images of the big waterfall one of them is below:

Fish Creek Falls in Ice. Buy a print. On Facebook.
Nikon D600, Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 at 70mm, f/11, 1/5s.

I took a lot of other more wide images of the falls too and also one under mostly moonlight. I might post those later perhaps. Lastly, here is the G+ link for this post.

The river bend

I am going through a lot of old images that I didn't fully appreciated before. This one is of a bend in the Virgin river in the Wall Street area of the Zion National Park Narrows.

Around the bend. Buy a print. On flickr. On Facebook. On Google+.
High resolution composite stitched from 9 images. Nikon D300, Nikkor 18-55mm at 24 mm, f/16, 1.3s, ISO 200. I made several versions of this image, several of which are in the Zion gallery on my smugmug site.

More from Rifle Falls

Some more images of the very photogenic Rifle Falls on the western slopes of the Rocky Mountains. I posted an image from here before, as well as a a lamentation on water drops on the lens. My photo buddy Dave Peterman told me about this place a few years ago but I never had a chance to visit. Certainly nice and the waterfall works even during the day and not just at sunrise or set.
See also the G+ post on this.


Companions. Buy a print.
Tech data: Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16 mm at 11mm, f/22, 1.0s, ISO 200, 4 stop ND + circ. polarizer.
Click for bigger. Image on flickr.


rear view mirror. Buy a print.
Tech data: Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16 mm at 11mm, f/22, 1.0s, ISO 200, 4 stop ND + circ. polarizer
Click for bigger. Image on flickr.


Up front. Buy a print.
Tech data: Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16 mm at 12mm, f/22, 0.8s, ISO 200, 4 stop ND + circ. polarizer
Click for bigger. Image on flickr.

Perils of photographing a waterfall

The image I posted yesterday needed some cleanup. The misting was so strong that within a few seconds, my filters would be covered in drops. Too fast to prevent by working fast, so I knew that digital tools would have to be involved in rescuing the images.

Right: Before extensive Photoshop spot healing tool work
Left: After

I had lots of trouble with drops on the filters as the below image will make very clear:


Amazing what is visible at 11mm and f/22. Obviously that image is a total loss apart from the novelty of showing it here. The dark corners are due to the stacked ND and polarizer and are visible when zoomed out all the way to 11mm on the Tokina 11-16mm and largely disappear when I apply lens distortion correction in Lightroom and crop a little. The price of stacking filters on a ultrawide lens I guess.

Rainbow

A rainbow forms in the mist sprayed by Rifle Falls in Rifle Falls State Park on the western slopes of the Rocky Mountains. A nice place to visit and camp in the walk-in tentsites (which are spectacular especially with kids - I don't understand why people like camping in movable homes). The falls are an easy walk from the walk-in tentsites either through a nice trail with lots of wild turkeys or over the dirt road. The falls themselves are overdeveloped and overvisited but very pretty and nice and cool on a record heat day in Colorado. Certainly a far cry from all the wildfires in the state at the moment. My heart goes out to all those affected. I'll post more later.


Falls. Buy a print.
Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16mm at 11 mm, f/16, 0.4s, ISO 200, circular polarizer and 4 stop ND filter to slow down the water.
Click for bigger. Same image on flickr. Same on G+.

Stormy fall

This is a waterfall just above Lake Isabelle in the Indian Peaks Wilderness. I was out on a hike with friends that only went to Lake Isabelle and I continued on to the glacier which would have been a little much for my companions. I showed the map profile to my hike in a previous post already. This was the wrong time of day for good light but nevertheless, some clouds came in and provided some extra interest.


A storm brewing. Buy a print. Click photo for bigger on my smugmug site.
Photo data: Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16 mm at 13 mm, f/16, 0.5 s, ISO 200, 4 stop ND + polarizer.
Image on flickr. Image on Google+.

You can barely see Navajo peak peeking out above the falls. Above Lake Isabelle, the landscape is just teeming with Marmots. I must have seen more than 20 or so. I took a picture of one with my phone:


Post on Google+

They are quite funny.

Ice fall in black and white

I suddenly remembered that I had visualized the icy waterfall image (Vernal falls in Yosemite) from a few days ago in black and white. Shades of Ansel I guess. I only looked at the images many days later when I got home as I intentionally did not bring a laptop on our Cali vacation so I forgot about that completely. I was taken away by the fact that the late afternoon light came through much better than I had anticipated in the raw images and so the color version was still great. Anyway, here is the image as I imagined it would turn out. I like this quite a bit myself.


Ice Fall Black and White. Buy a print. Same image on flickr. Google+ post.
High resolution composite of 9 images from a Nikon D300 with a Nikkor 18-55 mm DX lens at 32 mm, f/11, and 1/4 second shutter. Field of view equivalent to using a 11.5 mm lens on DX or 17 mm on a full frame camera.

Ice Fall

This image was taken on Christmas day at Vernal Falls in Yosemite National Park. I hiked up to this falls and the next one with my daughter. This year, there was basically no snow whatsoever in Yosemite making the waterfalls run very low. People working in the park were all worried and surprised by this long drought. Normally this falls is as wide as the lighter area you can see in the image. It was cold enough however for the water mist to freeze up. Quite spectacular. I tried to capture the extreme contrast in light and feeling between warm mountain and cold waterfall here.


Ice fall. Buy a print.
50 MP Composite of 9 images from a Nikon D300 with a Nikkor 18-55 mm DX lens at 32 mm, f/11, and 1/4 second shutter. Field of view equivalent to using a 11.5 mm lens on DX or 17 mm on FX.
Same image on flickr. Google+ post on the image.

More fall color in Eldorado Canyon

This image was taken at dusk. I have some nice images looking out over the rock formation with sunset glow on them that I will post at a later time. Now fall color is still topical so I'll show that here. This is a followup to the previous post. This waterfall is fairly easy to find right at a pullout to a big bouldering boulder. You have to scramble down a little through some brush and there it is. There are many nice waterfalls in this area but it is often difficult to get a good angle on them. I think this one works.


Dusk fall. Buy a print.
Technical: Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16 mm at 11 mm, f/11, 1.0s. 3 stop grad ND to darken the sky. Processed in Lightroom (no HDR).
Relevant Google+ post. Image on flickr.

Fall in Eldorado Canyon State Park

Yesterday, I dropped the little boy off with mom and sis who is selling tickets as a fundraiser for the awesome organization she rides horses with - The Westernaires. She is close to having sold 400 tickets now, which means she will have two chances to win that horse that we have little idea where to keep but we'll deal with that if it actualy happens. I am very proud though that she is working this hard to accomplish her goal with actually fairly little help from us except for giving rides and keeping her company. She is a better sales person than me. Anyway, I did a quick evening run after this to Eldorado Canyon State Park, a very nice park just southwest of Boulder that is famous for its climbing. I posted some winter images from this place before. The picture I will post below is quite different from those images. Even though as I showed before the high country of Colorado is getting snowed on already, the foothills are still in full fall mode. So I went to Eldorado Springs to hunt for a waterfall surrounded by fall foliage as well as to recreate a sunset shot I did with my phone a while ago but with better gear. The latter didn't pan out as I had hoped (I'll post some images anyway when I get to them), but the waterfalls wwere great. The below is one of those images I found.


Fall in Eldorado Canyon State Park. Buy a print
Technical data: Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16mm at 11.5mm, f/16, 0.4s, 3 stop ND and 3 stop grad ND filters to slow down the water and darken the sky. Edited in Lightroom (no HDR here!).
Relevant G+ post. The image on Flickr.

Boulder brook - Fall color in RMNP

This last Sunday I was working on finishing up a book chapter that I was already behind on on the deadline. I finished it somewhere Sunday morning, so I had some time in the afternoon to go out. So I set off for RMNP to see some fall color. Last year I visited Boulder Brook and I wanted to do this again as it was gorgeous. This is a small stream that runs along aptly named Boulder Brook trail for a while. It is only a short way from the trailhead, but I decided to explore the entire trail as it was still some time before sunset. It turns out that the most interesting parts I think are at the bottom in the part where the brook can only be heard from the trail, so a little bushwhacking is involved.


The red, the yellow and the green. Buy a print.
Stitched from 9 images (3 rows of 3) shot at 35 mm using the 35 mm f1.8 DX. ISO 200, f/16, 4s.

I love the red roots from the mosses that grow beside the trail. The color contradicts very nicely with the yellow of the fallen aspen leaves. I now realize that this is close to the same view (but more intimate) of an image that I shot last year in the rain, which can be found here and is described in a previous blog post.

A second viewpoint is here:


The thin blue line. Buy a print.
Stitched from 9 images (3 rows of 3) shot at 35 mm using the 35 mm f1.8 DX. ISO 200, f/16, 2.5s.

Walking back I saw some great color up in the sky, but arrived at the trailhead just too late for the really gorgeous sunset colors. Nevertheless I shot a quick pano that I will include below.


The gorge. Buy a print.
Assembled from 8 shots (4 each two and a half stops apart) at 35 mm, f/8.0, 1/5s - 1s, ISO 200.

Due to the vertical format of this blog, I had to make the image small. You can get a very large view of it by clicking on it.

Wild Basin waterfalls

Last sunday, I went hiking with my daughter in the Wild Basin area of RMNP. It was cloudy and overcast, so we went for late afternoon with the hope of photographing a few waterfalls and perhaps a lake with some clouds. The strategy for the Wild Basin trailhead as is true for many others in RMNP is to either come extremely early (i.e. 4 am or earlier) or later in the afternoon (>3pm), otherwise you'll have to walk quite a ways along the very boring road. We parked right next to the ranger station. We did not make it all the way to the lakes (Ouzel and Blue Bird) we were aiming for because not far before Ouzel falls we got in a major thunderstorm right above our heads and were pelted with heavy rain. Thunderstorms like this are the disadvantage of starting late and make it a very questionable idea to go up above treeline. So we turned around and photographed Calypso Cascades and the many nice waterfalls in Ouzel Creek in between heavy periods of rain. I am always proud of my 9-year old for not complaining about the rain and generally just having fun even when wet.

Calypso

Mosaic of 9 images for high resolution stitch. Individual images D300, ISO 200, Nikon 18-55mm at 34mm, f/22, 0.5s.
Buy a print.

Misty

Mosaic of 9 images for high resolution stitch. Individual images D300, ISO 200, Nikon 18-55mm at 34mm, f/22, 1.6s.
Buy a print.
The mist in this image is caused by the higher parts of the waterfall and of course the rain.

Casualty

Mosaic of 9 images for high resolution stitch. Individual images D300, ISO 200, Nikon 18-55mm at 34mm, f/22, 1.0s.
Buy a print.
This is the view from the bridge over the cascades. They are really quite impressive. There are not many flowers out yet which is quite surprising to me but probably owes to the long wet spring we had.

Unnamed Falls in Ouzel Creek panorama. This really should be seen large.

Mosaic of 10 images (five columns of two) for high resolution stitch. Individual images D300, ISO 200, Nikon 18-55mm at 34mm, f/16, 1/4s.
Buy a print.

The flow. Should be seen large for full effect.

Crop of above image and different treatment.
Buy a print.

There are a few more interesting images in the smugmug gallery. You can also check out a subset on flickr. They are also on Google+/Picasa. Enjoy!

Edit: Mariska noticed a very funny error in the post where I had replaced am with pm making it sound like it is hard for me to get out of bed before 4 pm. Of course am makes a lot more sense there.