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Surprise! Waterfalls at Emerald Pools Zion National Park, Utah Willie, Yan, and I planned on spending 2 days in Zion and then heading to Escalante to find our way to Zebra Canyon. Mama Nature had different plans for us. While hiking The Subway, the previous day, clouds had begun to roll in as we hiked. By the time we were back at our hotel for the night the clouds had gotten thick and rain started to come down. In the morning we woke up to a pretty heavy rain. Zebra Canyon was no longer an option due to flash flood potential. Not knowing what to do we decided to just roam around the park and see if we could find any fall colors that would be evenly lit with the clouds overhead. That's when we noticed waterfalls all over the park! Normally the waterfalls in Zion are a spring occurrence but with the temperature warm enough to be rain and not snow we were in for a treat! After photographing a waterfall near the Temple of Sinawava we decided to see if the waterfalls above Emerald Pools were going. Sure enough, they were raging! The 3 of us practically raced the mile to the pools and couldn't wait to take some shots. A trail leads behind the waterfalls and we carefully, lest we slip and fall, made our way to the other side of the falls. I wish a couple more of the trees still had their yellow leaves but I really liked how the water came pouring over these cliffs. I included the 2 by-standers in the right of this photo to give you a sense of scale. Nikon D800 w/Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8 ED-IF AF-S: 17mm, f/14, 0.8 sec, ISO 125
Eagle Ray Sunrise at Eagle Falls Lake Tahoe, California After Willie and I watched a beautiful sunrise over Emerald Bay we decided to see how easy it would be to find Eagle Falls. We knew the general location but we weren't sure if the falls was right off the trail, if we had to hike down to the lake, or what. Turns out it's a LOT easier to find than we thought. And by a lot easier I mean it's literally right off the road (you can see it from the road). It took a little bit of log walking, tree branch hangin' on, and some skippin' over rocks to get over here to get the composition we wanted. By this time the clouds were rollin' in pretty heavily and although we knew the color was gone we thought we'd have some fun taking some test shots anyways. I wanted to use the branches to add some interest to the foreground as well as frame the shot. I figured the tree could help frame this as well. The sunrise managed to squeak through the clouds and made a couple light-rays which I thought were neat. Without any color I thought I'd turn this into a black and white and see how it turned out. I used Nik's Silver Efex Pro to convert this and pull out some contrast and structure in the photo. Did I over process this? After the conversion I tried to pull the contrast back even more but I think a lot of that motion was in the RAW file from the long exposure. Thoughts? Nikon D700 w/Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8 ED-IF AF-S: 17mm, f/9, 0.5 sec, ISO 100 B+W Circular Polarizer + HiTech 0.6 Soft Grad ND
Emerald Jewels Emerald Bay Sunrise Lake Tahoe, California A couple weeks ago Willie asked me to reserve the weekend of March 30, 2012 for a photo-trip. About the same time, my roommate and a bunch of my friends decided to make that same weekend a Tahoe get-away/ski-trip weekend. I wanted to do both so I convinced Willie to join and we'd shoot Lake Tahoe. We had been monitoring the weather all week and it seemed like every 5 hours the report changed. A large storm was rolling in but nobody could decide when exactly it would hit. We knew we wanted to shoot Bonsai Rock (which I have previously photographed) and Emerald Bay. Planning this photo trip turned into a nightmare because we weren't sure what sunrises or sunsets would be good and we couldn't figure out if the roads would even be open. The road to Emerald Bay had been closed all week due to snow / avalanche control but finally opened as we drove up to Tahoe. Friday night we drove to Bonsai Rock and had a skunked sunset (but I did manage to get a photo that I was happy with thanks to the Lee Big Stopper, coming soon). Saturday morning we woke up at 5:15am (ouch), wiped the sand out of eyes and hit the road. I had done some research and found that Emerald Bay was not only really close to our cabin but also pretty easy to photograph. Just pull off on one of the turn-outs, find a spot that doesn't have trees, and shoot. We were the only ones on the road when we got to Emerald Bay and only a few cars passed us as we watched the sunrise. There were a LOT of clouds (as you can see) but we were lucky and an opening in the east allowed the sunrise to sneak through and light up the clouds. We were treated for a beautiful sunrise (finally Mama Nature played nice for us!). Thanks to a super massive wind that had blown in, Emerald Bay also had some neat wave action going on (which you can see in this photo). Willie used his new Singh-Ray Reverse ND Grad and was able to get a large dynamic range with very little clipping. My HiTech Reverse ND isn't as soft and was doing some ugly things to the hill on the left so I had to settle for 2 filters and some bracketing. This shot is a 2-exposure blend, although the underexposed photo was only used in the bright section on the right of the photo, above the mountains and below the clouds. Nikon D700 w/Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G ED AF-S: 24mm, f/18, 10 sec, ISO 100 Lee Filter Holder + (0.9 + 0.3) HiTech Soft ND Grad's
Surprise!
Waterfalls at Emerald Pools
Zion National Park, Utah

Willie, Yan, and I planned on spending 2 days in Zion and then heading to Escalante to find our way to Zebra Canyon. Mama Nature had different plans for us. While hiking The Subway, the previous day, clouds had begun to roll in as we hiked. By the time we were back at our hotel for the night the clouds had gotten thick and rain started to come down. In the morning we woke up to a pretty heavy rain. Zebra Canyon was no longer an option due to flash flood potential. Not knowing what to do we decided to just roam around the park and see if we could find any fall colors that would be evenly lit with the clouds overhead. That's when we noticed waterfalls all over the park! Normally the waterfalls in Zion are a spring occurrence but with the temperature warm enough to be rain and not snow we were in for a treat!

After photographing a waterfall near the Temple of Sinawava we decided to see if the waterfalls above Emerald Pools were going. Sure enough, they were raging! The 3 of us practically raced the mile to the pools and couldn't wait to take some shots. A trail leads behind the waterfalls and we carefully, lest we slip and fall, made our way to the other side of the falls. I wish a couple more of the trees still had their yellow leaves but I really liked how the water came pouring over these cliffs. I included the 2 by-standers in the right of this photo to give you a sense of scale.

Nikon D800 w/Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8 ED-IF AF-S:
17mm, f/14, 0.8 sec, ISO 125
Surprise! Waterfalls at Emerald Pools Zion National Park, Utah Willie, Yan, and I planned on spending 2 days in Zion and then heading to Escalante to find our way to Zebra Canyon. Mama Nature had different plans for us. While hiking The Subway, the previous day, clouds had begun to roll in as we hiked. By the time we were back at our hotel for the night the clouds had gotten thick and rain started to come down. In the morning we woke up to a pretty heavy rain. Zebra Canyon was no longer an option due to flash flood potential. Not knowing what to do we decided to just roam around the park and see if we could find any fall colors that would be evenly lit with the clouds overhead. That's when we noticed waterfalls all over the park! Normally the waterfalls in Zion are a spring occurrence but with the temperature warm enough to be rain and not snow we were in for a treat! After photographing a waterfall near the Temple of Sinawava we decided to see if the waterfalls above Emerald Pools were going. Sure enough, they were raging! The 3 of us practically raced the mile to the pools and couldn't wait to take some shots. A trail leads behind the waterfalls and we carefully, lest we slip and fall, made our way to the other side of the falls. I wish a couple more of the trees still had their yellow leaves but I really liked how the water came pouring over these cliffs. I included the 2 by-standers in the right of this photo to give you a sense of scale. Nikon D800 w/Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8 ED-IF AF-S: 17mm, f/14, 0.8 sec, ISO 125" href="javascript:openLB(2268854759,'',XLarge,'',1024,684);">Surprise! Waterfalls at Emerald Pools Zion National Park, Utah Willie, Yan, and I planned on spending 2 days in Zion and then heading to Escalante to find our way to Zebra Canyon. Mama Nature had different plans for us. While hiking The Subway, the previous day, clouds had begun to roll in as we hiked. By the time we were back at our hotel for the night the clouds had gotten thick and rain started to come down. In the morning we woke up to a pretty heavy rain. Zebra Canyon was no longer an option due to flash flood potential. Not knowing what to do we decided to just roam around the park and see if we could find any fall colors that would be evenly lit with the clouds overhead. That's when we noticed waterfalls all over the park! Normally the waterfalls in Zion are a spring occurrence but with the temperature warm enough to be rain and not snow we were in for a treat! After photographing a waterfall near the Temple of Sinawava we decided to see if the waterfalls above Emerald Pools were going. Sure enough, they were raging! The 3 of us practically raced the mile to the pools and couldn't wait to take some shots. A trail leads behind the waterfalls and we carefully, lest we slip and fall, made our way to the other side of the falls. I wish a couple more of the trees still had their yellow leaves but I really liked how the water came pouring over these cliffs. I included the 2 by-standers in the right of this photo to give you a sense of scale. Nikon D800 w/Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8 ED-IF AF-S: 17mm, f/14, 0.8 sec, ISO 125
Surprise!
Waterfalls at Emerald Pools
Zion National Park, Utah

Willie, Yan, and I planned on spending 2 days in Zion and then heading to Escalante to find our way to Zebra Canyon. Mama Nature had different plans for us. While hiking The Subway, the previous day, clouds had begun to roll in as we hiked. By the time we were back at our hotel for the night the clouds had gotten thick and rain started to come down. In the morning we woke up to a pretty heavy rain. Zebra Canyon was no longer an option due to flash flood potential. Not knowing what to do we decided to just roam around the park and see if we could find any fall colors that would be evenly lit with the clouds overhead. That's when we noticed waterfalls all over the park! Normally the waterfalls in Zion are a spring occurrence but with the temperature warm enough to be rain and not snow we were in for a treat!

After photographing a waterfall near the Temple of Sinawava we decided to see if the waterfalls above Emerald Pools were going. Sure enough, they were raging! The 3 of us practically raced the mile to the pools and couldn't wait to take some shots. A trail leads behind the waterfalls and we carefully, lest we slip and fall, made our way to the other side of the falls. I wish a couple more of the trees still had their yellow leaves but I really liked how the water came pouring over these cliffs. I included the 2 by-standers in the right of this photo to give you a sense of scale.

Nikon D800 w/Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8 ED-IF AF-S:
17mm, f/14, 0.8 sec, ISO 125
See photo in original gallery.
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