Waterfall - critique please

[Joves]

Hi I'm a big fan of waterfalls and am slowly working to photograph all of the significant waterfalls in New England. Winter has slowed this down some though. I thought the shot was pretty good. You got the shutter speed down to give that veiled look to the falls. Unfortunately the bottom left is a little blown out. Underexposing just a little may have helped. I tend to underexpose many of my waterfall photos by narrowing the aperture as I don't want to change shutter speed. I could do the same with changing the ISO I guess. I'm still learning this stuff.

I would have shot this vertically and used the stream to lead the eye in or out of the photo but that is just my artistic preference. I liked how the photo came out though and would love to travel to this one. Where is it located?

Thanks for your input. I am very much so a beginner at photography and honestly I am happy that I was able to slow the shutter speed enough to get this water effect.

This waterfall is located a couple miles from my house in White Haven, PA.

My suggestion then is for you to get a good Neutral Density filter for a nice sunny day. Just shoot at the lowest base ISO which if I remember right is 200 you dont want the Lo ones they suck and, then closing the lens up all the way. I constantly return to sites I have shot to try and get the perfect image of a given place. It is just what I do. Also as far as PS there is also Lightroom and, Elements which are less expensive than CS. Also there are some free programs like GIMP and Picassa which others may be able to give you an idea of which are good ones for the NEF files. I dont use them myself because I have Capture NX.

 

[RPetterson]

It is so pretty.

 

[Bambi]

For me the waterfall is too centred in the frame. You have the light forest, the waterfall and then the dark forest. I think you need to adjust your angles (as said earlier) to use the rule of thirds. I would recommend thinking carefully about what it is about this scene that makes you want to capture it and then try to show us that

 

[edouble]

thanks for your input I really appreciate it

 

[Shockey]

Why is the right side dark and the left side bright looks like it is split right down the middle.

 

[edouble]

Good point, I was obviously in the woods and the sun was coming over my right shoulder - hence a shadow from trees on the right and sunlit trees on the left

 

[edouble]

Six days later and the waterfall is froze over. I had waited for a few hours for two climbing enthusiasts to clear off the ice face but they seem to be staying there all day. So I took a few shots with them in the scene which gives some perspective to the size of the waterfall.

I had set my camera to aperture priority and bracketing mode with exposure control set to -2, 0, +2. Needless to say I am not pleased with the photos. After roughly 20 exposures and my fingers going numb a left the scene. All of my shots are very dark, it is a very cold and cloudy day

D-5000 with AF-S NIKKOR 18-55mm 1:3.5-5.6G
Exposure bias : 0
F-stop : f/7.1
Exp. time : 1/125
ISO : 200
No flash

A. unedited other than conversion from .NEF to .JPG and upload to Photobucket

B. A plus D-Lighting set to normal

C. B plus green intensifier

Tips??? Ideas???? Help????

 

[HikinMike]

The second one looks fine, exposure-wise. I probably would have shot this in portrait format though.