Roaring Seep - Burney Falls, California

My Portfolio and Photography Services

 

It's beautiful and warm this morning here in Santa Cruz, and the nice weather has got me thinking back to a fun trip I had last summer in the Mt Shasta region of California. This shot is from Burney Falls, a magnificent grotto where water seeps out of a thousand holes in the porous rock along a 129 foot high face while two massive cascades shoot like cannons off the top of the cliff. Having a hard time with an all-encompassing composition, I scrambled up the hill opposite the falls and zoomed in with a long lens to get a more intimate view.

 

 

-----------------------------------

Tech Notes on this Photo

-----------------------------------

Nikon D300s

Nikon 70-200 f/2.8 @ 70 mm on a crop sensor

ISO100 - trying to buy some shutter speed

f/22 - to help buy me some shutter speed and some DOF

1 sec

 

Post-Processing

----------------------

In Raw Converter (Nikon Capture NX2)

- Processed single raw file once

- Global contrast for added pop

- Local brightness and contrast adjustments in the water and rocks

 

In Photoshop:

- Selective sharpening of rocks

- High-pass filter (large radius) on a duplicated layer, blending mode set to vivid light, opacity at 45%, selectively painted in to help water pop

- Though about using a selective color adjustment to remove the blue tint from the falling water, but I really liked the way it supported the deep blue water at the bottom, so I left it alone

 

Thanks for your visits!

 

~Josh

Done