Rolling boom (with 3 re-edits)

Ok, I cropped it. It needed it.

With some dark rocks cloned out -

And a blur on the water -

Waterfall season is upon us. We have full ice out and snow melt and hopefully the roads up north aren’t mudholes anymore. That means I’ll be out and about trying to photograph them before leaves and bugs come into the picture.

Many of them are small like these - Washburn falls on the Popple river in Florence county, WI. Many have limited access or visibility, so working a site can be a challenge. For this I had to go off trail (what trail?! ha!), climb down a steep bank, cross a feeder stream and walk out onto a peninsula of rock sticking out into the river. There’s an island further down, but I didn’t trust the ice just yet. There wasn’t any other way to shoot it so I played with shutter speeds, tripod height and processing. This is my favorite of the series, but I’m curious as to other people’s reactions. It’s not epic like many waterfalls, but it’s typical of many rivers up this way.

Specific Feedback Requested

Should I have gotten rid of the sky bits either by cropping or cloning? I thought about it, but decided that it was a lot of work to clone and that cropping would unbalance the image. Yes? No? Something else?

Technical Details

Is this a composite: No
Lumix G9
Lumix G Vario 12-35mm f/2 lens @ 23mm (46mm equiv.)
f/14 | 1/8 sec | ISO 100
Tripod, polarizer, overexposed 2/3 stop to keep snow bright

Lr processing for all the usual stuff. Kept it natural in terms of color and white balance. Did some local adjustment work with a brush for highlights in the water as well as texture in the snow. It was a great way to spend New Years Day!

@the.wire.smith

No, nothing? Echo? lol

Hi Kristen. This is a very nice winter river image. I think your decision to crop was a good one, the bits of gray sky don’t add anything here. The brownish water reminds me of a local stream and waterfalls, one of my favorite places to photograph.

The composition works well for me. I really like the S-curve of main whitewater path in the river flowing out the lower right. I have two comments: I would like a bit longer shutter speed, but of course that’s just my preference. The dark spots of rock (2 left, 1 right) in the snow pull my eye out to the sides of the image, so you may consider cloning them.

Thanks Craig. I have a very long exposure of this scene (10 seconds or so), but it doesn’t work. There isn’t enough detail in the water. For some reason I didn’t do one in between so I used a bit of a blur filter to sort of fake it. It isn’t the best, but it’s a direction to go in and sort of fun to play with.

Removed the little rocks that draw attention and think it works to focus the eye. Thanks for the input!

Check out the OP for the images.