Your Daily Dose Of Fall Foliage Photographs; Number 9

The iconic view of the Upper Falls at Letchworth State Park in New York.  This is probably the 
highest contrast scene I have photographed.  The sun was just above the bank of clouds.
(click to enlarge)

I’ve wanted to visit Letchworth State Park in western Upstate New York for decades.  I finally made it last week.  My wife and I were on a 10-day road trip and Letchworth was one of the places I had on my must-visit list.

This is the iconic photo everyone takes—the railroad trestle above and behind the Upper Falls.  Of course, one must get the iconic images out of the way in order to ‘release’ one’s creative vision and not be distracted by the obvious so more personal images can be made.

The difficult thing about this image is that it was directly backlit by the sun, which was just out of the frame above those cumulus clouds.  The contrast was extreme.  That said, I made a number of 5-shot brackets assuming my OM-1 camera’s sensor could not handle the extreme contrast.  It seemed, at that time, that my choice was a) lose detail in the clouds, b) lose the shadow detail in the rocks or c) bracket.  I bracketed.

Surprise!  This was made from a single exposure and edited on my iPad in Lightroom Mobile in my hotel room.  Don’t let anyone tell you a Micro4/3 sensor doesn’t have sufficient dynamic range to handle contrasty situations.  Poppycock!

Letchworth was worth waiting for and I highly recommend visiting, especially in the fall.  It was gorgeous in all directions.

On a slightly different note, I was hoping for a train but no luck.  I think I’ll play around with generative fill and see if I can ‘create’ a train crossing the trestle.  Just for kicks.

Join me over at my website, https://www.dennismook.com.  

Thanks for looking. Enjoy!  

Dennis A. Mook  

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