nomadlens
Images of the South West
Waterfall, Burrator Reservoir
Before moving to the West Country I lived for most of my life in the North of England where little waterfalls can be found without looking too hard. Down here they are not so common and it is always a delight to find one. We have a few on the Culm Coast though generally they are hard to access and to get into the optimal position for a photograph.
During our recent discovery of the Burrator area of Dartmoor we drove around the reservoir and found this on the West side. It is a pretty spot with an upper and lower waterfall (the latter being depicted here). I haven’t been able to find a name for either the waterfall or the stream feeding it.
It was a popular and busy spot on one of the first fine weekend days this year and even very late in the day I had to show a little patience; in fact, I drove around the reservoir twice, mainly to check out possible locations, and the second time around I had the waterfall to myself.
A bit of a cliché to shoot a long exposure of a waterfall maybe but when you don’t see one very often it is hard to resist the temptation. It rains a lot around here and the area is damp and mossy, something I pre-visualised emphasising in post production.
Location
Burrator Reservoir, Dartmoor, Devon, UK
EXIF
Camera: Olympus E-M1
Lens: Olympus M 12-40 mm f/2.8
Focal Length: 30mm
Aperture: ƒ/7.1
Shutter Speed: 10s
ISO: 100
Image Details
As I wanted to focus on the river and greenery in this shot a fair amount of work was needed. A couple of distractingly bright leaves/sticks were removed before giving the greens a LAB saturation boost. A luminosity mask was used to select the darks in the image, which were treated to a small amount of Color Efex's Midnight filter. Finally, substantial burning was done on a Burn/Dodge Soft Light blended layer, which was applied a second time on a weaker opacity.
1 Comment
Cliche or not, I also like taking long exposed shots of waterfalls 🙂 Love the colours and, in particular, the contrast in this one.