Sharon Prislipsky, APSA, EPSA  


Mountain Cascade by Sharon Prislipsky, APSA, EPSA

June 2020 - Mountain Cascade

About the Image(s)

We took our camper into the Ouachita Mountains a couple weeks ago, just after a very hard all day rain. We found this pretty cascade along a scenic road. It actually feeds 28 ft. Hardy Falls which is just below it, but I thought the cascade was more intereting than the falls. Interestingly, two days later the cascade was down to a mere trickle, so i felt lucky to be there at the right time.
I captured this image around 6 AM which was technically just a few minutes after sunrise, but it is on the west side of the mountain, so the sun was not over the horizon in this location. This made the understory pretty dark requring me to bump up the ISO quite a bit. I also used a polarizer so ended up needing ISO 640. Aperture was f/16 and I made 3 exposures 1 2/3 stops apart.
The processing was done in Viveza and Color Efex Pro4. I like my water to be white so adjusted the hue and I incresed detail in a few places. I used tonal contrast, and I think I used Skylight on this. I finished with Reflector Effects, using the silver preset and adjusting the direction of the light and falloff. There is one area in the center where there was some movement of the leaves due to the air current generated by the falling water. I have sharpened this as much as I can, and I am thinking that at normal viewing distance it is passable. Of course if we pixel peep we can see that it is soft, but I still think that this would be OK for a canvas print. I will be curious to see what you all think.


This round’s discussion is now closed!
5 comments posted




 
Sharon, this is glorious. There are many images that could stand alone in this one large image. I feel as though I could smell the crisp surroundings. Only because you told us I looked for the soft leaves. One would really need to pixel creep to focus on them.   Posted: 06/02/2020 06:14:20



Mike Cohen   Mike Cohen
I think this is a masterpiece. It's also funny in light of the response I just gave Lisa to how I perceive sharpness. It looks perfectly sharp to me. Good "old" eyes serve me again! I wanted to play with the image and my goal was to address your perceived lask of sharpness and a couple of things I would have done were this my image. I didn't like the area where the walling water hit the pool at the bottom. It looked distorted and blown out on my monitor. This could easily be a result of a sizing issue and not exist on the original. Nonetheless, I addressed it by running a blur layer and partially blurring that area and cloning in some detail from adjacent areas.

Next, I ran my 30/30 unsharp mask action, the effect of which was oversharpening. I left it in but reduced the opacity of that layer. Frankly, it looks sharp to me without it.

I then added clarity and darkness to the pool about the lower fall to bring some richness to that pool, since it commands a center of attention above the main falls.

Last, I ran from NIK a Glamour Glow, which I think is an Orton effect. (An effect where a blurred layer is placed over a sharp layer to create a glow without destroying sharpness.) I actually meant to run the darken edges lighten center filter but this came us as I had last used it and it created an effect I liked.

Bravo Sharon, this one belongs on a wall.   Posted: 06/02/2020 10:06:45
Comment Image



Pamela Hoaglund   Pamela Hoaglund
You were in the right place at the right time. Your composition is really nice. I like that you used a slow enough shutter speed to give the water the feeling of movement without making it milky. I don't have a problem with a little softness in the middle branches as the water flow causes air movement and there is no way to stop the movement without a fast shutter speed. I would rather have the movement in the cascading water. If you find the bottom pool distracting where the water hits I see another beautiful composition cropping just above that cascade. A keeper for sure.   Posted: 06/07/2020 18:27:50



Judith Lesnaw   Judith Lesnaw
What a magical image. The detail is so interesting I cant stop studying it. That large branch seems poised to plunge over the edge. The colors are wonderful. So peaceful. I can hear the water rushing, and almost see Hobbits jumping from rock to rock. I am reminded of places in the Red River Gorge in KY. I think this image will look terrific on canvas. I have not heard of the software you used to edit it. What did the original look like?
  Posted: 06/14/2020 19:42:20



 
Fantastic image. Making the water white just highlighted and accented the whole image. The bottom center pool looks quite natural to me and you can just hear the water rushing by and smell the freshness of nature in this image. Well done and definitely a keeper.   Posted: 06/19/2020 11:21:27