EXPLORING LATOURELL FALLS
“Are We Still On Earth” is one of my favorite photos of all time, both from a taken photo and from an editing perspective. Once again we were on a family adventure (these were becoming more and more common as there were less and less things to do safely with Covid around) and were driving down the I-84 on the Oregon and Washington border where we came across signs for Latourell Falls, naturally we decided to go check it out! This waterfall was quite interesting as the fall itself was rather large, but the base and following stream were not allowing me to get super close and personal with the fall (well as close as its epic water spray would allow). This particular photo was taken only a few feet from the base.
The sheer beauty of the Sony 12-24mm F2.8 G Master is the fact that I can stand at the base of this fall, zoom out to 12mm and still capture all of it! What an amazing lens, especially considering that it is super wide without offering fisheye lens like distortion. This was the last photo of the day at the falls as it was starting to get dark and cold, overall a great day with the family and for photography.
Much like the first photo I shot this photo directly from the base (though much closer than the first one) as I wanted to show off the shine on the wet, black rocks that surrounded the base of the fall. These rocks were truly amazing to shoot as they all looked super reflective and smooth and served as a direct contrast to the dull, matte like, rough finish of the cliffside surrounding the falls.
A little bit to the side of the main waterfall was a second smaller waterfall that had some really interesting foliage around it and a giant rock in front of it. I decided in this situation to do a longer exposure as it presented a perfect opportunity to test out my Peter McKinnon X PolarPro Variable Neutral Density filter set. In this case I threw on the 2-5 stop variant and went to town. Im not usually one to spend a ton of money on filters, or really any money at all as I normally don’t like using filters, but I do have to say that the PM VND’s were worth every penny, especially at the Black Friday Special price that I was able to pick them up at.
On our way home, right before we got on the freeway, I noticed this pullout facing the Columbia river. I pulled over and grabbed a quick photo, turned out pretty good. Till next time…
