Stop taking snapshots! | Start creating better photographs

Franklin Falls has been on my list to photograph for a long time and I'm finally going to make it happen. In the winter time the hike is quite long. It's about seven miles round trip because of all the snow and they closed the road. If you want to know where it is it's pretty much at Snoqualmie Pass and the falls are actually underneath Interstate 90. It's pretty crazy but it's a spectacular waterfall when you've got good flow and that's exactly what we're going to have today. I don't know if you can hear me over the falls but the flow is just off the charts and I don't know if I'm going to be able to get a shot because of the spray is just constantly I can't even see right now. It's a lot and it's really cold but I've already figured out an approximate focal length using my phone. I've got my tripod kind of set up. See what I'm going to be able to put together here and see if I can even remotely come away with a photograph. It's not just covered in mist. This is a much better vantage point than where I was. A lot less mist and I like this leading line of this of the creek is so much better than where I was. It was just the falls plus I can frame my image with this left side with this tree over here a little bit of a waterfall that's happening back there the main fall and these boulders here. I kind of like those as well with the trees at the top. It's just a better composition all the way around from here than it is way up there where it's just you're just so close to the waterfall. This provides a lot of context and a lot of extra complementary elements to the photograph that I think works really really really well and it's definitely not as cold or as wet. So I played around with a whole bunch of shutter speeds because that's a lot a lot of water that's coming across the falls really really fast. I wanted to make sure that when I got home that I wasn't sad and if the shot comes out and I know it will I'll show it to you right now. So before I show you the final image from my trip to Franklin Falls I wanted to kind of go over why the other compositions didn't work because it was really hard to film with all of that spray it was just so wet so windy and so cold that it was just impossible to really explain or show you the back of the camera. So I wanted to just kind of go through why these compositions just didn't work and why the final one that I'll show you at the end is way way better. So this is the first shot from the video where I'm actually standing there getting pounded in the face with all of the all of the spray and just ignore my shutter speed. This is a very basic bare edit on the image so it does have a little bit of processing done but the things that I just don't like is the fact that I've got a lot of this middle ground and the foreground is just not interesting whatsoever and the other thing is that I've got a lot of the sky up here in the upper left again it's it was a cloudy overcast kind of a drizzly day and it's just not very interesting. The big thing is for me is that highway 90 interstate 90 is so predominant in that upper left corner and while it may be kind of cool that's not my subject. My subject is this waterfall and it just it doesn't work in this vertical orientation. It just doesn't work. I don't have a foreground interest. I have no leading line per se. It's there's not hardly anything at all good about it. This next image so I recognized those flaws while I was standing there and I said well let me just fill the frame with the waterfall because we'll eliminate all those distractions and those things that aren't interesting and just focus on the subject which is the waterfall and again this is hasn't been edited even less and the shutter speed is is too long on it as well but again you're going to get the gist of why I don't think it's that good of a composition. Number one it's just a picture of a waterfall that could be anywhere. There's really no context. It's not that awesome of a waterfall. If it was just humongous and had a sense of scale it would be better but because it's just not that spectacular of a waterfall there's not a lot of elements to add to create a better image. I think that an image has to have more than one element to elevate it from something that's just like a snapshot or okay to better to best kind of deal you know kind of increasing the quality of it by adding these other elements and for this waterfall zooming in and getting really close to it just doesn't make it better. It just makes it bigger. So then I said well what if I instead of trying to do a vertical shot if I get more of the surrounding area in and I do a landscape shot. So let me try it that way and I think this is marginally better. Things that I like as I like the creek over here and this far left that is definitely better. It's got some interest in it. This huge swath of rock is not interesting whatsoever. Even here on the far right side of the image it's a lot of just not interesting anything. It's just just there. I've got a huge highway 9 interstate 90. I've got a huge interstate 90 up here in the upper left and it's even bigger. Don't really really care for that. The landscape orientation definitely works better than the portrait but we can still make it better. So this is the final location that I moved to and the composition that I like the best and I'll show you why I think this works way better than the previous one when I was so much closer to the waterfall. Because that's your first instinct that was mine was let's get close to the waterfall and I want to just fill the frame and get just be there. But the waterfall just doesn't warrant and work by being that close to it. It works a lot better when I've got this leading line and I'm much further away. So this is right out of the camera. No adjustments whatsoever. The first thing I would do is crop it. I've got a lot of dead space over here on the right. I do love this leading line that's coming in from the left with that stream. So if I just again if I pull this in and I had mentioned in the video that one tree this this fir tree over here I like that as like a framing element for the left hand side of my image. So I'm going to make sure I don't cut that off. I'm also going to take and bring this top in as well. I don't mind having a little bit of interstate 90 in the in the photograph. I just don't want a lot. I want to minimize that. And so I'm going to take and bring it in from this top right like that. And then if I zoom in boom that is just a much much better composition. It's a much stronger image than anything else that I just shared with you. Oh before I forget if you're interested in joining me on a personalized workshop go to my website jamesparkerphoto.com. Take a look. Get in contact with me. We can set something up. Now's the perfect time to do any type of waterfall photography in the gorge anywhere in the region. The Oregon coast is calling. The Washington coast is calling. Olympic National Park is calling. All of those places are on the itinerary. You pick where you want to go and you pick when you want to go. We coordinate. Pick out that date and we go off and have an epic landscape photography adventure together. Before I show you my favorite image from the Franklin Falls trip it sure would mean a lot if you would give me a good old thumbs up. Subscribe to the channel and hit that notification bell so you don't miss any videos that I release. That really helps my channel out and I really really appreciate it. Thanks for watching and I'll see you next time.