My monthly excursion to the mountains took me to the south end of the Chestatee WMA area to where Waters Creek and Dicks Creek merge and create a lovely cascade of waterfalls. I had visited once before with my family so the location was on my mental checklist of places to shoot. I arrived early  but there were already fishermen extracting trout from the rushing pools. While I was there a photographer also began doing portraits of a family at the creek. The day was fairly productive with several targets and views to work with. I got 5 shots in all within a 2 hour window.

Image 1 – The upper falls drops sharply between a slit in the rocks and forms a nice pool which then cascades over a smaller wider rocky set of falls. There is also a fallen tree which arches over the top of the falls. I flubbed my first shot forgetting to stop down the shutter but did not realize until I was set up for next shot. I went back later to  retake the image  which went smoother, but I could not get back to same position due to fishermen in the space.

Image 2 – The laurel were blooming and the top of the lower falls had a nice angle across the creek with some still water pools and moving water to make for an interesting shot. The foreground laurel were also twisty and interesting.

Image 3 – The lower falls are much wider than the upper falls and are what most people like to capture. I started off with a 135MM lens but it was so wide I was capturing the fisher men on the banks of the creek on right.

Image 4 – Lower falls again but with 180mm lens and changed from horizontal to vertical view emphasizing the trees above the falls too. However another fisherman popped up at  the top of the falls so I may not have this scene without people.

Image 5- I wandered down the trail a bit and found some laurel plants growing straight up with some nice ferns at their base. Light green ferns, dark foliage, and some twisty laurel in the background should be interesting. Low contrast scene so I will need to bump it up in development and printing.

Over the next few weeks I hope to share the images from this outing. My 135MM lens at f22 was my main workhorse for this trip. I need to get some ND filters and step up rings however so I can extend the exposures for waterfall shots.

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