November 13, 1829 was the last daredevil jump of Sam Patch known as the “Yankee Leaper”. He was popular from 1827-29, jumping off ship masts, bridges, factory buildings, and whatever else he could jump off into dangerous waters! He gained nationwide fame when he leaped from a 125 foot ladder into Niagara Falls! Unfortunately this last leap into the High Falls ended his career and life.
Specific Feedback Requested
I framed it to take out as much modern looking stuff as possible, also got rid of graffiti and ended up doing a slight crop. I wanted the brick and stone parts of the concrete to look like ruins. Does it achieve that?
Anything else
Technical Details
Is this a composite: No
Nikon D3400
38mm
1/320
f/4.8
ISO 100
Slight crop, and a lot of repairing!
Vanessa, the falls is quite dramatic with all of the mist at the bottom showing the power of the water. Your framing does a good job of deemphasizing the man made structures.
Thank you, @Mark_Seaver and @terryb! Yeah, it is very powerful! I can’t imagine how much more it would be without the dams that are up river from it! Thanks for looking and comments!
That is an impressive amount of falling water! Your treatment of the remaining man-made structures does make them look like ruins. For me, though, leaving just that little bit of man-made in isn’t working composition-wise - there’s just enough of it showing that it makes me want to see more. Why not include it? It’s part of the story of the falls. Just my opinion, but when there is something so obviously man-made in the immediate vicinity of a natural (?) feature, I’m inclined to leave it in because it has become part of the scene - the “natural feature” isn’t in the wilderness anymore. But as far as conveying falling water, this does that in spades.
I get where you’re coming from @Bonnie_Lampley , but I wasn’t trying for wilderness, like I said I wanted to only show the older man made parts around the falls. This is how I actually photographed it and you can see a cheesy looking gazebo and a little part of some newer brick apartment buildings, so that’s what I was trying to eliminate, I tried repairing/cloning but with my subpar tools it just didn’t look right, because I do like the old looking part of a bldg on the right and especially the trees right below and to the right of it, any thoughts?….
@Vanessa_Hill, I think if you straighten things up (correct the vertical tilt) you will eliminate the top of the obviously newer gazebo and the bits of newer buildings. I brought it into ACR and corrected the tilt (it looks like you were pointing your camera down so the verticals towards the edges are pointing “out”. I then cropped just a bit off the right and bottom (to maintain the same aspect ratio you have) to eliminate a distracting building and bit of outcrop that were right on the frame edges, desaturated the reds in the buildings, and cloned out some light distracting bits. See what you think.
And, BTW, the story of the “Yankee Leaper” was something. The YouTube star of his day.
Ha! That’s funny! I’m glad you liked my historical account! It was something that I thought was strangely fascinating. I like what you did with it, I never thought to straighten it out, it was a very awkward shooting position I was in and trying to get the falls right… thanks for your feedback!
