Sol Duc Falls
Sep. 10th, 2021 09:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerOlympic Peninsula Travelog #17
Sol Duc, WA - Sun, 5 Sep 2021. 3:30pm.
After finishing our hike at Marymere Falls this afternoon we drove a bit further west, to the Sol Duc River valley. Sol Duc is a transliteration of the native Quileute name for the river. It means "sparkling waters". On some signs it's written (improperly, IMO) as "Soleduck" because those are the two English words the pronunciation sounds like.
As with Marymere Falls earlier today I'm not going to write much about the trail itself. The hike is easy to see as a means to an end— that end being the glorious Sol Duc Falls.
"Not much" is not the same as nothing, though. I will write a bit about the trail, if only because in places like this it's important not to overlook the trail as being strictly a means to an end. Being deep in the rain forests of the Pacific Northwest is a sublime experience if you slow down enough to absorb it. Tall trees rise far above you, while the green of undergrowth glistens with drops of water. In beauty all around me, I walk.
Then you hear the falls crashing over rocks and that all recedes back into the background. 🤣
Most of the waterfalls photos I've been sharing this trip I've shot with slow exposures. That's how I get the silky, blurred effect with the flowing water. The photo I've included above doesn't have that effect. It's more like what a typical photographer shoots in this scene. It's 1/240 sec at f/5.6, ISO 800. Instead of a motion blur effect with the water you get a stop-motion effect: you can see the water in drops and blobs spraying over the falls.
I've included this picture so you can compare it to the next one, shot at the same place but with different camera settings.
This photo is shot at 1.4 seconds— an interval 336 times longer than the previous pic. I narrowed the aperture down slightly to f/6.4 and lowered the sensitivity to ISO 80.... but these two changes alone don't explain how I was able to set the shutter to stay open 336x as long. Those two settings only allow about a 11x change. The other factor of 32x came from the neutral density (ND) filter I've been writing about in many of these waterfall blogs.
Which one's better? It's a matter of taste. I'll say that the first photo is more accurate to the experience. It looks like what you see with the human eye when you are there. The second one is more art. I tend to prefer the second style (as you might have guessed from how often I employ it in the waterfall photos I share) but I'm sharing both here so you can choose for yourself.
Keep reading: MOAR Sol Duc Falls!
Sol Duc, WA - Sun, 5 Sep 2021. 3:30pm.
After finishing our hike at Marymere Falls this afternoon we drove a bit further west, to the Sol Duc River valley. Sol Duc is a transliteration of the native Quileute name for the river. It means "sparkling waters". On some signs it's written (improperly, IMO) as "Soleduck" because those are the two English words the pronunciation sounds like.
As with Marymere Falls earlier today I'm not going to write much about the trail itself. The hike is easy to see as a means to an end— that end being the glorious Sol Duc Falls.
"Not much" is not the same as nothing, though. I will write a bit about the trail, if only because in places like this it's important not to overlook the trail as being strictly a means to an end. Being deep in the rain forests of the Pacific Northwest is a sublime experience if you slow down enough to absorb it. Tall trees rise far above you, while the green of undergrowth glistens with drops of water. In beauty all around me, I walk.
Then you hear the falls crashing over rocks and that all recedes back into the background. 🤣
Most of the waterfalls photos I've been sharing this trip I've shot with slow exposures. That's how I get the silky, blurred effect with the flowing water. The photo I've included above doesn't have that effect. It's more like what a typical photographer shoots in this scene. It's 1/240 sec at f/5.6, ISO 800. Instead of a motion blur effect with the water you get a stop-motion effect: you can see the water in drops and blobs spraying over the falls.
I've included this picture so you can compare it to the next one, shot at the same place but with different camera settings.
This photo is shot at 1.4 seconds— an interval 336 times longer than the previous pic. I narrowed the aperture down slightly to f/6.4 and lowered the sensitivity to ISO 80.... but these two changes alone don't explain how I was able to set the shutter to stay open 336x as long. Those two settings only allow about a 11x change. The other factor of 32x came from the neutral density (ND) filter I've been writing about in many of these waterfall blogs.
Which one's better? It's a matter of taste. I'll say that the first photo is more accurate to the experience. It looks like what you see with the human eye when you are there. The second one is more art. I tend to prefer the second style (as you might have guessed from how often I employ it in the waterfall photos I share) but I'm sharing both here so you can choose for yourself.
Keep reading: MOAR Sol Duc Falls!
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Date: 2021-09-11 01:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-09-11 11:37 pm (UTC)