Cascades on the Margaret River

 With all  the trouble my computer and the hard drives are giving me a the moment, I find it hard to dedicate time to go out and shoot. Just yesterday, while running a backup, my PC crashed repeatedly, until I found out that it was the backup software, of all things, that caused the issues...

Anyway, I had some time last Saturday evening and wanted to go out and shoot the Margaret River near the Waterfall Cottages, as I recently discovered some cascades in that area. 

 Armed with my 16-35mm f/4 IS lens - my go-to-lens ever since I bought it, I absolutely love it! - and a polarizing filter I hit the banks of the river and tried out different compositions, attempting to smooth out the flowing water and capture trails of the bits of foam that were floating atop the surface of the river... 

 The terrain on the river edge was pretty rugged and I struggled a bit getting a good vantage point and safely securing my tripod. I brought a Manfrotto BeFree, which essentially is a great tripod, but for all my ventures, I figured, it is a little too small. I am currently looking into larger gear to future-proof all my undertakings.

 This was the only shot I used the 70-200mm lens for that night. The tree stood on the other side of the river and was quite impressive. I wanted to include some of the waterfall in the image but that proved to be trickier than I thought as my view was limited by the undergrowth around me and the 70-200mm was too long, even at the shortest focal length. The shot still turned out alright as the focus remains with the tree. I am still getting used to the colors of the Australian bush at sunset. They are so different from anywhere else I've been to and my PC's monitor isn't the greatest to get accurate results from...(There's another future investment lurking... :) )

 My favorite shot from that night: As all the images above I used a 5-exposure bracket and blended the images in LREnfuse. I then touched the image up in Lightroom. I didn't see the need to bring it into NIK Color or Vintage Efex, but perhaps this is something to look into another day :)

On my way back into town I installed my camera-tripod combination in the boot of my car and shot a few images while driving through town. Turned out alright, but I was hoping for smoother light trails of the street lights... Another experiment to be refined :)