McKinney Falls State Park

McKinney Falls State Park lies just on the edge of Austin, sort of near our airport.  It is a nice quiet place and although it isn't large, the waterfalls are gorgeous.  I met my good photo buddy Pete Talke there yesterday for a little photowalk.  We have had some nice rain lately, and even some snow, and there was a lot of water and it was moving fast!  It was a great day to be out taking these types of shots.  We hiked around the Upper Falls for a bit, taking numerous pictures of course, and then we headed down to the Lower Falls, which is where I got this shot.  When we arrived at the Lower Falls, we both immediately saw a nice big rock that sort of stuck out into the current, and it presented an excellent spot to get a shot from.  We climbed around and took pictures from all sorts of angles.  For this shot, I got out on the edge of a partially submerged rock.  I could feel the spray of the waterfall on my face and see it on my lens.  But hey, it was worth it right?

This is a 6 exposures HDR taken at f/11, with exposures ranging from +2 to -3.  I merged them into an HDR in Photomatix, which took a while.  The reason it took a while is that I decided to take it slow.  I often find myself so excited that I rush to get a picture processed.  Really, what's the hurry Jim?  So this time I took my time with all the sliders in Photomatix until I got it looking just the way I wanted it to look.  Then, I made some adjustments in Photoshop Elements.  Again, I took this one slow and easy.  I usually make adjustments to Contrast and do UnSharp Mask, but this time I also spent some time in Hue/Saturation and Lighting/Shadow.  After that, I ran it through the new v4 of Topaz Adjust for a little "pop".  Finally, I removed lens spots from all the waterfall spray in Aperture, and I was done.  Hope you like it!