Great Falls Park

This weekend I had the opportunity to visit friends and family in Washington DC. I asked for a scenic location and being into photography himself, my brother took me to visit Great Falls Park. It was a very nice and leisurely stroll. We visited the Maryland side of the river. The trail/boardwalk ends right at this view. It is a very beautiful sight. We arrived some time before sunset. It was a relatively bright a clear sky so I gave some thought to how I wanted to capture it’s beauty.

I used the 5D mark III for this shot. After a few wide angle test shots with the Tokina 16-28mm f/2.8, I swapped lenses to the Canon 70-200mm f/2.8 IS II and began my panoramic shots. Even though it was close to sunset, because of the very bright light and clear skies (non dispersed/diffused light) it was a challenge to capture all the detail without using High Dynamic Range (HDR) bracketed composite shots. To compensate for this and capture the defining motion of the water I used a 10-stop Neutral Density (ND) filter. I also stopped my aperture down to f/11 to increase my depth of field and shot in AV mode to compensate for the varying cloud cover and shadows across the frame. The result is this 54 Megapixel HDR panoramic.

You can read more about Great Falls Park here.

I rarely find myself in front of the camera so it’s hard to tell I was ever there. Here are a few shots my brother took of me. I didn’t realize I was a bit of a nut until now…LOL. Thanks Chris!