Delphi Falls County Park

Sunday was my adventure day. It didn’t turn out to be the adventure I thought it would be but it was still an adventure. My original intent was to hit the parks around Ithaca, NY but sometime Saturday night I saw an image from Delphi Falls County Park and it changed my entire day. I have never been to Delphi Falls and when I realized it was not very far from home a new adventure began.

My day started at Bellamy Harbor in Rome to capture the sunrise. There were not many clouds in the sky but I did get some great fog on the water of the canal. I would have explored more except I did not think the little, nasty mosquitos would be awake so early in the morning. Damn! I’ll have a few images from the sunrise in a later post. It still was a great way to get the day started.

Later in the morning I headed out to Delphi Falls. I had a good idea how to get there but I let the GPS plot its route which took me on a few roads I have never been on before. It was a lazy Sunday morning with warm sunshine streaming in through the car windows, I was in no hurry so I enjoyed the exploration provided by the GPS. You can see a name on a map but when you arrive at the “town” of Delphi Falls and realize it is a small collection of houses along a small country road you start to wonder if this drive was going to be worth it.

It was! The park was very small but the path from the parking area brings you right to the base of the lower falls. This one is sixty feet high with nice cascading flow. I was lucky to get the perfect amount of water in the stream. It allowed me to smooth the water enough for a great effect. The upper falls, which is fifty-four feet high did not appear to be accessible via and path I could find. Of course, I didn’t think to bring my drone! What happened? Well, I now know where I’ll be coming back to when the leaves change! And I’ll be bringing the drone…

Seeing how Delphi Falls is south of Cazenovia I was not going to miss the chance to stop at Chittenango Falls State Park on my way back home. It would only be around 11am so I wasn’t exactly positive I would get many good views with the sun being so high in the sky without any clouds. I sopped anyway. You would too, right?

The sun was definitely an issue. The polarizer was almost useless and I needed to shade the front of the lens with my hat. I managed a few images of the namesake falls but my other go to points in the park were in direct sunlight and the glare was overpowering. I cut the visit short knowing I will be back soon for the autumn colors.

I did have a great experience, for me anyway, and a little out of the norm. There was a large family down in the gorge when I arrived. One gentleman had a Fujifilm camera and tripod so we ended up trading viewing spots as we both worked the scene. We chatted a little bit and he joked about following me using my spots. As I was starting to leave the area another of the gentlemen asked me about the glare he was getting with his iPhone. I explained how the sun was causing it as it hit the lens on his phone. I had him compose his view and then I shaded the phone with my hat. He was so excited at how the image turned out and thanked me for the tip. I will admit to walking a little taller on my way up from the gorge.

I ended my adventure day back at Bellamy Harbor. My plan was to capture the full moon rising. If my calculations were correct I would be able to get an image of it rising over the Mill St. bridge. My only concern was the timing. The sun was setting about fifteen minutes before the moon would rise and then I would still need to wait for it to clear the top of the bridge. The sky ended up getting too dark and the moon too bright to achieve the image I wanted. I did end up with a few images of the water tower with the moon. I’m still trying to work out the processing of those images.

Well, time for me to go to Delta Lake for the moonset. I’m hoping I have better luck this morning. Oh yeah, here is Delphi Falls…