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A long exposure capture of organic forms with tree roots mirroring water flow at Gledhill Falls on McCarrs Creek near Terrey Hills, NSW, Australia.
A long exposure capture of organic forms with tree roots mirroring water flow at Gledhill Falls on McCarrs Creek near Terrey Hills, NSW, Australia.
Gledhill Falls
Gledhill Falls
Gledhill Falls
The different image sizes, Nook, Feature and Mural, shown to scale against a human figure. This comparison is for

Gledhill Falls

$264.00 USD
449
449
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A long exposure capture of organic forms with tree roots mirroring water flow at Gledhill Falls on McCarr's Creek near Terrey Hills, NSW, Australia. Taken at the bottom of the gully carved out by McCarr's Creek.

NookFeatureMural
Dimensions
  • Story
  • Planning
  • Technical

How this shot came about.

Casting a photographic net far and wide in the pursuit of worthy images is not the only way find that great shot. Nature is nothing if not abundant in her provision of wonders and sometimes all it takes is a foray into your local surrounds to find them.

This shot came about one weekend after I got a bee in my bonnet about getting a waterfall shot for the portfolio. McCarr's Creek gully where Gledhill Falls is only about a 20 minute drive from our house in Sydney so I headed out one Sunday morning to see what I could see.

After that short drive and then a 15 minute walk to the top of the gully I scrambled down the 10-12m (33-40ft) walls of the gorge and struck out upstream following the faint sounds of the falls.

The walls seemed to bend in above me and the early afternoon light struggled to make its way down to where I was walking but after a short while I rounded a bend and the gorge opened out improving the light somewhat and I found this nice trickle bouncing off rocks into a pool below.

I originally set up on the falls side of the tree in this image and tried various compositions and levels of Neutral Density filters to try to capture and interesting shot -  but without success. After about an hour and a half and 15 attempts later I decided that today was obviously not the day and started to retrace my steps back to where I had climbed in.

As I walked away something made me turn back for one more look - and that's when I saw this shot. The composition was exactly what I had been looking for and using 15 stops of neutral density I was able to freeze the falls and capture a richness in the colors.

The capturing the two time-frames of geotropism in this image is what makes this shot for me. The image brings the flow of the water and the flow of the tree roots into the same frame. Both driven by gravity and both exhibiting the same patterns of flow. 

Shot Location

The Shot

I wanted to find a shot of a waterfall close to where we lived and spent some time on the KuRingGai and Parks & Wildlife websites researching their locations.

Gledhill Falls was located such that I would have the afternoon light while in the gully where the falls were situated (or so I thought!)

The Photographer's Ephemeris showing the shot location

The Photographer’s Ephemeris is a trademark of Crookneck Consulting LLC, registered in the United States.
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Gear

Camera: Canon EOS 7D

Lens: Canon EF-S 18-55mm f3.5-5.6 IS

Storage: SanDisk Extreme Pro CF UDMA 7 64Gb

Ballhead: Manfrotto 498RC2

Tripod: Manfrotto 055XPROB

Cable Release: Promote

ND Filter: NISI

Exposures

Count: 1

HDR Count: 0 exposures per shot

Aperture: f5.6

ISO: 100

Focal Length: 23 mm

EV values: 0

Shutter: 138"

Filters

ND Filter: 15 stops

Gradient Filter: false

Polarizer: false

Image

Rows: 1

Shots: 1

HDR Shots: 0

Aspect: Portrait

Arrangement: 1x1

Post Production

Basic Workflow

  • This image is a single long exposure (138") taken with an ND filter so no stitching was required
  • I passed the image through Topaz DeNoiseAI 
    • removing CCD artifacts from the image
    • particularly in the darker areas of the cave above the waterfall
  • I used Photoshop's spot healing tool to remove quite a few sensor artifacts from the image

Image Adjustment

  • Once I was satisfied with the results there was a light pass through Topaz SharpenAI
  • I used the spot healing tool to remove some small crossing branches which were detracting from the flow of the tree roots in the foreground 
  • I reduced the brightness of the rock shelf in the upper left as it was drawing the eye away from the main subject
  • The image was cropped in to contrast and compare the movement of the water and the flow of the tree roots

A graphic of the shot's layout structure

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