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Ricketts Glen State Park, PA

I went to Ricketts Glen State Park in northeast Pennsylvania, September 29-30, 2007. It's a pretty park with lots of waterfalls. My friend Deepak joined me there and we camped, shot some pictures, hiked, and such. Here are some photo highlights of the trip.

Pictures I'm particularly fond of have a border around them.

Click on the thumbnail images to get larger ones (around 100-300K). Click on the "huge" link to get the full size pictures (around 3M). Around 90 pictures included.

Lake Jean

Deepak and I arrived around midnight, Friday night, set up our tent, and went to bed. Many of the campsites were right on the lake. Ours was just across from sites that were on it. So on Saturday morning, just around sunrise (7am) we went to the edge of the lake to shoot a few pictures.

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It was a bit cool and windy, as can be seen from the surface of the water. There was a very small island that was starting to get lit from the morning light. Unfortunately, the shot is a bit out of focus. The second shot is of some tall grass or reeds by the shore.

Not great pictures, but there are much better ones later on from Sunday morning.

Mohawk Falls

The first falls heading south on the Falls Trail is Mohawk falls. The sign says "37'" which I'm not sure if it's all at once or the sum of all the vertical drop associated with that area. It was a pretty falls, with area that had a normal "stream" of water, and another area that had a lines of water beads dripping down.

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The first three pictures are of the larger, sheet flow of water in Mohawk Falls. The second three are the beads/lines of water.

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Three more pictures of the falls.

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A few experiments. The early morning light was intense in certain areas and shadowed in others. Since the glen is fairly deep, it blocks some of the light early on, which adds some nice texture to objects. The day was beautiful and clear, no clouds. The first picture is of the shadows on the ground of rocks and leaves. The second was looking up at the trees which were mostly still green but a few were starting to get fall colors on them. The green and fall colors stood out nicely against the clear, blue sky. And the last shot was of the trees with the Mohawk Falls in the picture. I tried to get it so the waterfall would still be visible which makes the sky overexposed.

One general problem of shooting pictures in this sort of environment is that the dynamic light range is too big. It's very easy to get parts of the picture that are completely hidden by shadows and another part that's completely blown out. I'm not sure if there are any easy ways to get around (not involving taking 3 shots with different shutter settings and putting them together). Also, the digital camera I was using was fairly simple and limited.

Oneida Falls

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Two shots of Oneida Falls. The first is a little overexposed, the second is better.

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The high contrast or dynamic range of the light is really apparent in the first shot. The white water to the left is overexposed and the dark shadowy area to the right is underexposed. I wasn't in the mood to do photoshop trickery. A small rainbow is (sort of) visible in the middle of the second picture.

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Some pretty fall colors. Unfortunately, a bit blurry.

Ganoga Falls

Before getting to Ganoga, we stopped at Cayuga Falls, a "mere" 11 feet.

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This shot is (I think) Cayuga Falls, and a rainbow is visible in the middle of the picture.

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The trail splits off at a few places. The first split goes off to an overlook just below the top of Ganoga Falls. The first two pictures were shot there.

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These three pictures were experiments to capture the droplet stream coming off the top of the falls. I played with using available light and a flash and metering on different parts. The water in the second and third pictures is overexposed, but the hail of water droplets streaks is visible, which is what I trying to capture. It sort of looks like a stream of energy or possibly antimatter (reminiscent of the white wall of antimatter from DC's Crisis on Infinite Earths 12-part mini-series comic, from long ago).

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More experimentation. I discovered the "sepia tone" mode in the digital camera and was playing with it. To be honest, I'm not all that impressed with it, as the edges and shadows and constrast lines don't stand out as much as I had hoped it would.

On the Falls Trail

We had planned to do most of the picture taking in the morning and at the end of the day, when the light would create more interesting subjects. During the afternoon, we decided that'd be the better time to hike the trails and scout out locations. And that's what we did. It turns out there's also a lot more people on the trails in the afternoon, so it seems like we chose wisely.

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The first picture is of Deepak, swinging his walking stick while at the start of the Falls Trail. The second is of the Falls Trail map. And the third is a warning sign. The hike really isn't that bad.

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The first two picture are looking up at talls trees along the trail. The third is of a mushroom growing along the trial. I like the first and third shots.

Murray Reynolds Falls

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Two shots of the falls.

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Again, looking at the falls from the top. The second picture was at the top as the water was heading over a drop.

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There were leaves in the water. I took a few shots of them. I like all three of them. The water was moving in the first, while it was pretty stationary in the other two. The highlights in the water are kind of neat. I like the colors in the second shot, and the third one was a macro, which happened to come out in focus.

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Two shots of a white fungus growing on a branch, and one of a mushroom on the ground. The depth of field is very narrow, so only the middle of it is in focus.

Sheldon Reynolds Falls

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The first shot is a little dark, as I was trying not to overexpose the whole thing. The second looks like it's a stream of anti-matter pouring down over the rocks, but the rest of it is illumiated OK. The last is of Deepak standing at the edge of the falls, contemplating his next photo opportunity. I like the wavey water texture.

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The first picture is looking over the top as the water falls down over the rocks. The other two shots are from the bottom, looking at the falls. I like the third picture because of the smooth look of the water. Normally, I'm not into long exposures that smooth out the texture of the water, but this is how it really looked, so I wasn't cheating.

One Foggy Morning (on Lake Jean)

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There were two rocks in the water, just beyond the reeds. I took a few pictures of that, trying to get the shadowy background and the nice reflection from the water.

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To the left of where we were standing was a little point sticking out along the shore. I took a few pictures of that with the first two mostly capturing the grey tones and the last showing some of the color of the trees on the left edge of the picture.

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Another rock picture. I noticed then that a canoe with a man and two boys was slowing coming our way. They were fishing, quietly in the pre-dawn light.

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More shots of the canoe and hte rocks. In the last shot, which I like, the aluminum canoe is catching the light from the rising sun, and the most coming off the lake is more visible than in the other shots.

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The first picture shows Deepak stalking his subject — appropriately enough a stalk. In the next two pictures I tried to capture the dew on the tall grass leaves.

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More dew shots. Even though the camera I was using had a macro capability, that was a bit close and small. The camera wanted to focus on the grass in the background. And once I got it to focus, I had to adjust it a little by physically moving the camera closer and farther away, as the depth of field was pretty small.

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The first shot is dew on a top of a stalk, with the lake visible in the background. There are some thin strands of a spider web visible, though I didn't notice it when I took the picture. The second is a close-up of the dew on a blade of grass.

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While walking from the campground to the waterfalls, we passed a site that had a picnic table surrounded by colorful leaves. I took a few pictures. For the first two shots, I was standing on top of the bench shooting down to the table, so I could get the leaves surrounding it. The first is with available light, the second with a flash. In the third shot, I went for a differnet perspective. I like how that one came out.

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Primative Frank in a Primative Area. This is, of course, one for the continuing series of Frank Reacts to Signs. The other two pictures are a spider web. It was a bitch to shoot and I don't think either of us got any really good picture of it. Hard to focus on, shooting into the light, and every 2 minutes, the light has changed and the web is no longer visible.

Along the trail

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Two pictures of fern leaves in the morning light. I like the second shot, in particular how the left branch is fully lit, the middle two are half lit, ahlf in shadow, and the rightmost one is all shadowed. And it also happens to be in focus.

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While there were some leaves that had changed colors, most were still pretty green. Looking up, I saw the green leaves lit by the morning sun. Some were light some were dark as they were shadowed by other leaves. And they were standing out against a clear, blue sky. I took 3 shots playing with the exposure. I think the first is probably the best of the set and most true to how it looked. Even so, it was more impressive to see in person.

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One mroe shot of some fungus growing on a log.

Seneca Falls

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Two shots of the Seneca Falls.

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The first shot is of the trees above the falls. The second is looking past the falls, shooting into the morning sun that was illuminating the falls.

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There was a big rock by the edge of the trail that looked cool. It had a brick pattern to it. The last shot is another one of the leaves against the sky, with one tree whose leaves had started to get colorful.

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We noticed a caterpillar on a leaf. So I took a couple shots of it, the first with available light, the second with a flash.

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And finally, we noticed a very sparse pine tree, and one colorful leaf that had fallen from another tree was stuck in the middle. The splash of color looked cool. I tried to capture that, but in the first shot, it's too close and hard to get the context, and in the second, the colorful splash is too small to really stand out.

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