Photo Details
| Title: | Autumn at Hemlock Falls, South Orange, New Jersey |
| Taken: | 27 October, 2019 |
| Location: | |
| Camera: | NIKON Z 7 |
| Focal length: | 24mm |
| Shutter speed: | 1/200s |
| Aperture: | ƒ/4 |
| ISO: | 1600 |
It’s fall here in New Jersey, which means the leaves have turned fiery colors with greens now replaced by yellows, oranges, and browns. I wanted to capture that spirit, and a recent rainstorm meant I could get fall color side-by-side with a fully flowing Hemlock Falls in New Jersey’s South Mountain Reservation.
As photos go, this was a pretty standard two-shot waterfall image. One shot was slow, to allow the water to blend together into a nice flow. The other shot was fast to capture the leaves in a single crisp image so they weren’t a blurry mess from blowing around in the wind. I then combined them in Photoshop to get the version you see here.
Even though I took this photo in 2019 (sorry for taking so long to post it), I recall working through several different angles to capture both the falls and the leaves. There weren’t a lot of good options, and I eventually settled on this composition with my camera set low on a tripod. The falls dominate the scene, with orange leaves framing the top and then spread out in hidden little places around the photo. The scene is unmistakably fall, even if the trees are not front and center.
Fall is my favorite time of year, and I love seeing the leaves give one last bright flourish before the dark days of winter. Photos like this can be a happy reminder of life in the cold days ahead.
