Not only rivers and waterfalls capture my attention, but stumps and fallen trees seem to be a recurring theme.  On one of my Sunday Morning Adventures to Amicalola I took the opposite path from Edge of the World to check on a fishing spot after a heavy rain. I noticed this huge stump was beached that I don’t remember being there before. The water had been really high that past week so I imagine it was dislodged from somewhere else and floated downstream. The stump was well weathered so it was not a recent cut and perhaps lost some of its structure in the heavy water flow. It provided an interesting focal point for the rapidly flowing high waters.

I used a red filter to darken the foliage on the other side and to give some contrast to the brightly lit scene. This also allowed me to slow the shutter to 1/2 second at f32 to give the water some smoothness. However there is some flare evident on the upper left of the negative which gives a grey cast to the foliage. A bit of creative cropping at 2:1 minimized the impact and gives a more pleasing image. I was also trying out a new film Bergger Panchro 400 to see if I like the higher speed rated films. This shot seems ok and the contrast was well controlled. The shadows are a little blocked up but you can’t see them because of the cropping. I could probably expand the Bergger Film another 20% over my normal processing time.

I realized the size and scale of the stump are not evident in this shot so I did go back a few days later and capture the scene from further back. The river was still flowing quite heavy then and the light was a bit more overcast so I did not use the filters. So here is the wider view of the river and some trees and the stump to the left. The slightly warmer tone is due to differences in my scanner picking up the base color of the paper vs conversion to neutral above.