Exploring Whiskeytown: Brandy Creek Falls

Last week I hiked to Brandy Creek Falls. It is a short 1.5 mile hike with around a 500 foot elevation change. At the start you go mostly uphill on the way to the waterfall, so when you head back out its faster and almost all downhill. This is a hike that I’ve always felt is more about reaching the destination (Brandy Creek Waterfall) and not much else. I went early in the morning and had the trail to myself. On the way out there were two other people headed in. Unfortunately because of the time and coolness the mosquitoes were still out in swarms and if I stopped to take a photo they were on me in the dozens. Seriously I’ve never felt so many of them on me at once as I did that day. Also on the drive in I startled a Black Bear that darted across the road, he was moving really quick.

I ended up with two Photospheres from this hike, one is from the rapids leading to the waterfall, and the other is from the base of Brandy Creek Falls. What I really like about this waterfall is that it has a ledge in front of the pool, and the water from the waterfall is reduced down to these two paths out of the pool. Between the two paths is a small tree growing seemly out of the rock.

[sphere 489]

[sphere 490]

I’m not used to shooting a this time of day and had a lot of over exposed images because of the differences in light. I’ve gotten in the bad habit of shooting in Program mode, and just working with that in Photoshop. Usually it serves me well but on this day it did not. My Aperature on most images is set to f / 1.8 giving them a really shallow depth of field and makes some of them fuzzy looking. I usually end up using Program mode because I want the images to have a balance histogram in the camera and not be blown out on either the dark or light side, typically this is what the Program mode attempts to do. I may try the Shutter Priority Mode and see how that works out. I always handhold my camera so I need the shutter speed to be fast, even at the cost of f/stops and or ISO. This set is also comprised almost entirely of Panorama’s with just one frame being a single shot. I’ve always thought I should get a nice wide angle lens to use, I’m currently thinking about an EF 17-40 f/4L. So instead of using Panoramas to build a wide viewing angle I could just take the photograph.

Next up is Guardian Rock Trail, I can’t remember having hiked this trail before so it should be interesting.