Long exposure photography is my favorite kind of photography, especially waterfalls. When I am out in the field everything stands still and all I have to focus on is my camera and the nature around me. I always challenge myself to find a composition that people overlook and or have never taken before of a waterfall and that is what leads me to the story on this specific waterfall and how I got the shot. Tumalo falls is in Bend, Oregon. It is one of the most beautiful waterfalls in the area and you can even walk behind the falls. I have visited this waterfall many times but never when there was snow and ice on the ground. The moment I saw this I knew I had to get down to the river to take a photo. I played with a couple compositions on the hill but was not satisfied and I knew I would regret not trying to get below. The hill was very steep and covered in snow and ice so it was not the safest. Once I got down to the river, I walked out across the river hopping from snow covered rock to snow covered rock and ended up standing on a thin sheet of ice and setting up my camera there.
Luckily for me, I recently got the Davis & Sanford TR684C-36 Carbon Fiber tripod which is a huge game changer for me as a photographer. In the past it was such a hassle to take a tripod on hikes because they were too large and heavy or they were so small that I couldn’t set it up in certain places for my desired composition. Now, I actually want to take my tripod on hikes because the TR684 is so light, packs down very well and it extends to be a large tripod! As I was setting up the shot it just happened that the ice in the foreground of the shot lined up very well and leads you into the photo! I stood there with my legs shaking on the ice as I assembled my equipment. I put on my Tiffen 1.2 ND filter on my lens so that I could take a longer exposure since it was about 2:00pm in the afternoon. Without the Tiffen ND filter I would not have been able to get a long enough exposure to get the water so smooth. Twenty minutes later I had an arsenal of photos, dry shoes, and a smile on my face because I knew that I had captured Tumalo Falls in a way that very few have done before.