Tag Archives: waterfalls

Waterfalls of Ohiopyle State Park

Anyone that has viewed my website more than once probably knows that I often hike around Ohiopyle State Park and post pictures from there.  Today will be no different as a buddy and I hiked a bit over 8 miles around the park and tried to view most of the waterfalls in the area.  It has been a rainy week or so and we were hoping that the water levels would be higher than normal, and it appears we were correct.

We started out at the Jonathan Run trailhead and made our way to our first stop, the upper falls of Jonathan Run.  Normally I don’t see much water going over them, so I was a bit surprised at the amount going over today.  After we grabbed some shots there, we made our way down to the lower Jonathan Run falls.  It’s always a steep climb up and down to reach them, but it’s worth it if the water is flowing.

At this point, I wanted to make our way to cascades so we made our way back to our vehicles, dropped one off at Cucumber Falls parking lot and drove to the upper lot at the trailhead for the Cascade’s waterfall trail.  Our first stop after the hike downhill were the Cascade waterfalls.  There was much more water going over than I’d ever seen it, so some of my usual spots to cross to the other side were blocked.  We started to get some pictures at the upper end of the falls and then worked our way down to the base.

Once we were happy that we captured everything we could, we moved on down the trail past Flat Rock and stopped to take a look over the cliff edge on the Yellow Trail between Flat Rock and the waterslides.  We found a way down to the base of the cliff and stopped for some more pictures.  This was a small waterfall that I hadn’t noticed before.

We eventually ended up at Cucumber Falls.  It is very difficult to get a new and interesting shot of these falls that hasn’t been done a hundred times over, but it’s always a fun challenge.  Right as we were about to pack up, we noticed a rather large spider sitting on a rock very near to us.  I quickly threw on a telephoto lens with a macro adapter on the front, grabbed a TTL cord and a flash and got as close as I could, about 5″ from the spider.  I was sure he was going to attack…

More waterfalls

This somewhat rainy and windy weekend was our first camping trip of the season.  We were at Laurelville for the Association Weekend, so it wasn’t really a camping trip with the exception that we slept in the camper.  It was still a great time and felt good to be outside most of the day.  While the girls napped, I managed to sneak away and get some biking and picture taking done.  I tried to get some different views of the same waterfall.

RAW vs. JPEG with the Fuji

RAW vs. JPEG.  This subject is bound to start almost as many fights as Nikon vs. Canon (neither!) and can be argued either way.  Unlike the choice of two camera companies that produce almost identical products, the RAW vs. JPEG decision can have long lasting effects on your image library.  Ever since I went beyond the Auto modes on my first DSLR, I have been shooting RAW.  At first, it was a crutch because RAW files are much more malleable and can be massaged to hide mistakes in exposure, white balance and almost everything else but composition and focus.  I’ve progressed now to using RAW so that I can develop the photograph after I take it and then worry about conversion to black and white, adding curves, clarity and so forth.

The downside to this approach is that every image needs attention to some extent.  I do have a default preset for each of my camera’s that I apply on import into Lightroom, but I end up tweaking every image regardless.  I’ve been experimenting on using the generated JPEG’s from my X-E1, but RAW has spoiled me.  The JPEG’s are great and I think I could be perfectly happy with them, but after seeing what I can do with the RAW files, it’s tough to give up that control to a computer.

Anyway, on to the pictures.  This weekend had me in Pittsburgh for a friends wedding, so I walked around the Pitt campus before the reception and then stopped at Mt. Washington after.  Sunday I managed to find a few hours to get out hiking at Ohiopyle again.  I stayed around the Ferncliff area and wanted to get some different angles of the main falls to see what I could come up with.  The water was a bit low so there were some more places to go.