Pixley Falls State Park

It was finally the end of the work week. It had been long. On Tuesday I chose to do the morning for me and captured the sunrise. Yesterday, I chose me again and left work during lunch (already had the 40 hrs in). Although it was slightly raining/snowing I drove up to Pixley Falls for pictures. It was worth it.

As I was capturing views of the waterfall I was planning how I wanted to process the images. I could see them already as nice monochrome images. Knowing this would be the result I wanted, influenced how I captured each scene. Not only was composition important so was tonal quality and textures.

The greens of spring have not started to show here in Upstate NY. Add in the overcast day (perfect for waterfalls BTW) and you can see how monochrome processing works for these images. I did want to show a few other variations for this first image. This is essentially straight out of the camera.

The wet conditions of the day enhance parts of the scene. Tree trunks are darker. The rocks to the right of the waterfall are also darker in tone. These will be enhanced by converting to monochrome. I also play with the saturation of the separate colors (mostly orange, yellow and blue) to highlight different areas of the image. Which brings us to the monochrome version.

To be honest, not a big change from the original. I made one more version of this image. I applied a vintage preset I created years ago. There is a matte overlay as well as tweaks to the highlights and shadows (adding yellow and blue respectively). For me it changes the feeling of the image. Not sure I prefer it over the monochrome version but I think it “fits” the view.

The snow started to increase and the wind kept swirling the mist/snow onto my lens. It was getting difficult to keep the front clean. My hands were getting cold too. Why I didn’t use the gloves I keep in the car is beyond me. There is a good chance the weather will be favorable this weekend. I’m looking forward to venturing out again with the camera.