There wasn’t much to do in the afternoon and there was no light, so I decided to go into the woods a try to photograph something that I had seen in the winter.
At Oxbow Falls Park, there was a large and dark tree that I thought would look great when there was foliage on the canopy and this day seemed as good as any other to try to capture it. It is a HUGE tree (for the area) and I thought that the only way that I could possibly capture it was with the fish-eye. I was wrong, of course … the scene was unremarkable and the tree is too large and difficult to photograph (at least today it was).
And then it started to rain. As the rain began to fall, I decided to try some ICM before stowing away my camera. I still had the fish-eye mounted on the camera, so I elected to try some rotational images, my favorite of which is below.
The rain slowed as I made my way back to the car, affording me the opportunity to practice developing a composition of this scene. Although I had it with me, I wasn’t inclined to unfold and setup the tripod, so I could only close down the aperture so far in the poor light. This prevented me from getting the fallen log as sharp as I would have wanted, but it was something that I was considering as I composed the shot and was happy with the what I came up with as an exercise in composition.
On the way back to the lot, I captured one additional ICM image before returning to the car.
When I arrived at the car, I decided to follow the stream that runs along the road, even though it isn’t marked by a formal trail. As I moved a little farther to the south I was greeted by an obvious path which I then followed to what is (to my surprise!) the prettiest falls in the park, I think. I tried a handful of compositions, but ultimately landed on this one as my favorite.
I went out to photograph a tree, and came back with a decent image of a water fall instead. Not too shabby.