David Griffin Photography

The inspiration for this image was the following scene:

[qt:/video/20103-263-6202.mov 800 450]

I’m not sure the video does the scene justice.  I wanted to try to capture the feeling of the explosion of water and air that was continually forming at the base of the waterfall.   I exposed the scene at a number of shutter speeds, but this one seemed, to me, to capture the dynamic nature of this event the best (so far) — where we see water transformed into something completely different.

Technical mumbo-jumbo:

Image capture was with a Canon 5D Mark II, 70-200mm f/2.8L at 135mm, 1/1000, f/9.0, ISO 1600, polarizer on Gitzo tripod and Manfrotto 701HDV fluid head.   Video capture used the same camera, lens, tripod, with unrecorded settings, 24p.

Lightroom post-processing: No exposure change, recovery 78 (to pull lots of detail from the foam), fill 39, black point 36 (to enhance the glow in the water), clarity +78, vibrance +19, relatively strong sharpening with masking set to keep the smooth areas artifact-free.

Video clip is just transcoded for web distribution – no editing.

The past few days have been pretty interesting here in eastern and central Massachusetts.  We picked up close to 7 inches of rain in our backyard, and this on top of a similar storm that passed through just a few weeks ago.  Consequently the rivers and streams in the area have been jumping their banks.

I’ve been trying to take advantage of this situation, although other commitments plus the occasional emergency has made this difficult.  Fortunately, for me, even though the damaging flood waters have mostly receded around here, it’ll be several days before things return to anything resembling normal stream flow.

The photo above was taken at the Powder Mill Dam in Acton where there is a small run-of-the-river hydropower plant in operation.  That’s the dam’s powerhouse reflected in water.  I suspect they are at peak production right now — Concord (who purchases the power) is a bit greener because of this.

This evening I’m off to Nashoba Brook in Acton to do some filming and I’m desperately hoping for some nice evening light.   My Canon 5D Mark 2 recently received its firmware upgrade allowing me to film at 24 frames/second which is what traditional film cameras do.  The difference is subtle but having spent our lives watching moving pictures at different rates there seems to be an almost subliminal change in how people perceive the two and for the little film I have in mind I want the smoother look of 24 fps.

Technical stuff: Photo taken with a Canon 5D Mark 2, 70-200mm f/2.8 @ f/20, 1/8 second, ISO 100, polarizer and 3-stop ND filter, cable release, sitting on a Gitzo tripod and Manfrotto 701HD fluid head (I was shooting video too).  Lightroom: played with fill and black point, removed one big dust spot but not a bunch of smaller ones (yet).  Bit of vibrance and clarity. Slight crop on the right to remove — I was shooting through a fence and it intruded on the right hand side creating a vignette-like appearance.

If you are interested in the river flooding saga here I shot a short YouTube video showing what it was happening here in Maynard near the peak flow:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4b2nNoTFw4[/youtube]