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Winter Flow

Posted by
Darkelf Photography (Perth, Australia) on 24 August 2020 in Landscape & Rural and Portfolio.

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One more local image today, from the hills near Perth in Western Australia. Given that we are not able to travel outside of our state, we had lot of time on the weekends to discover areas closer to home. We specifically concentrated on the Perth Hills region, which has many walking trails and a lot of seasonal streams and waterfalls. The water flow is only substantial during winter and early spring months, after winter rains arrive in Perth and dump enough precipitation on the area. In summer most, if not all, of these streams are bone dry.

This spot is called Rocky Pool and it long has been popular with locals as a hiking destination and also for the ones who enjoy a swim. We left our hike to Rocky Pool until there was a week with sufficient rainfall to ensure that there would be water flowing through the rocks and it was a magnificent sight when we arrived. The rapids were happening, the light conditions were very good and it was calm around the gully so that there was little movement of the trees and no spray from the waterfall.

We settled quickly around to take some photos and we were also lucky that it was very quiet as we arrived not too long before the end of the day. It took me a bit of time to work out a good composition. I did not want to get any overhanging or other stray branches reaching into the frame and that meant I had to positions my tripod carefully in the water to get a perspective I liked on the falls.

One part of the landscape I really enjoyed at this location were the orange/bronze hued rocks and boulders that surrounded the pool. With late hour sunlight also casting warm light over the scene, it enhanced the tones of the rocks and brought out those hues even more. The colours of Aussie bush can really be magical and this is just one example and when happens when they come alive.

There are different approaches to waterfalls when it comes to shutter speed. I like the water flow in my images to be more silky than textured so I tend to go for long exposures to achieve that effect. In this case there really was not much difference between five and thirty second exposures. At a wide angle setting, the smoothness of the flow was about the same to the eye but a longer exposure was required anyway to get the detail in the shadow areas.

I love photographing waterfalls and that was always something that I could not do too much around Perth, given our climate and dry summer. Now that we discovered the hills all over again, you can be sure that we will be spending more time out there each winter season to search around local creeks and streams for spots just like this one.

Canon EOS 5D Mark IV 30 seconds F/20.0 ISO 100 16 mm

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