One of my favorite places to photograph is Collins Creek. It’s about an hour’s drive from home; it’s a short, easy walk from the parking area to the creek; there are several waterfalls to photograph; and, usually, I’m the only one there, so it is very quiet and peaceful.
I’ve visited Collins Creek nearly a dozen times since I first discovered the location back in 2014. On several of my recent trips, I have tried to photograph other subjects besides just the waterfalls. But, no matter how hard I try, one or two (or, maybe, three or four or more) of my pictures include the waterfalls. I just can’t help myself!
Looking through all my photos from Collins Creek, though, I realized that almost all of them have been taken from only one side of the creek. There’s a simple explanation for that, of course; I couldn’t get to the other side without walking through the creek and soaking my shoes, socks, and feet.
So, for my most recent trip, I decided to rectify that situation and bought a pair of waterproof boots. When I arrived at the parking area, I took off my hiking shoes, slid on my waterproof boots, headed down to the creek, and didn’t stop until I was on the other side.
I’ve photographed this particular waterfall many times. But, standing in about eight to ten inches of water on the opposite side of the creek provided a completely different perspective than what I typically see. I set up the camera and tripod in the water and framed the scene. I wanted to emphasize the length of the waterfall, so I changed the camera’s aspect ratio to 16:9, composed the image, and pressed the shutter button.
Opening the file on my computer, I liked the composition of the image, but there was something about the scene that I found distracting. It took me a while to figure out exactly what that was, and, as it turned out, it was the color.
I rarely process my images as black and white. I like to see and have always envied a well-crafted black and white photograph, but it’s never been something I have set out to do. But, in this photograph, specks of orange, caused by minerals in the water, made my eyes jump all over the place. A tiny bit of green lichen behind one of the streams of water became an unwanted focal point. In other words, the scene was too complicated. The subject was the waterfall, not all the little bits of color throughout the frame.
Since color was not a primary factor in this particular image, I processed the file as a black and white photograph. This simplified the picture by removing the distracting color and letting the waterfall shine through as the subject. I made some additional adjustments to increase contrast to get to this final image.