12 Months of Great Falls!

Hello everyone,

I hope everyone is doing well, what a wild start to the year we have had so far. So many tragedies have happen already I think this has been the worst starts to any year in recent memory. I’m hoping it changes and this year improves I have so many plans for this year. I have started my recovery process hoping to improve the mobility in my knee. So far everything is going well and I am happy with the progress i’m making. I’m extremely happy that I haven’t had any back pain and my medication has been helping me live a somewhat normal life. I still have the occasional days where I am feeling extremely tired or i’m feeling pain but it definitely has improved.

If you been following me for awhile now then you may know the special connection I have with Great falls. Since the beginning of my photography journey I have use this park as a reference point to see how far my photography has come. I also use it to implement new strategies or techniques that i’ve learn. I truly love photographing this place and will keep on coming back and pushing the boundaries of my artistic vision. We got out first snow storm here in Northern Virginia on January 6. We haven’t had quite a big storm in awhile it was nice to see 8 inches of snow on the ground. I was so limited on travel though so that same weekend I was having issues trying to figure out where I could go to take pictures. I couldn’t decide and then it occurred to me I don’t have a picture of Great Falls covered in snow. I knew I had to have that shot so I started checking the weather and I saw we had a clear morning the next day so I set my alarm and got my stuff ready. I woke up really early and started heading towards Great Falls. I knew I will be very limited on time from the time I was going to get there so I left everything ready so when I got there I just pull out the equipment I needed and head towards the overlooks. As I got there the trails were covered in snow and overlook 1 was closed due to the icy conditions. I got a bit worried and started watching my step as I headed towards overlook 2. It was here where I saw some rocks covered in snow and immediately started to think how can I incorporate them into my picture. I set up my tripod and locked my camera then started playing around with my setting until I got to the look I was going for. The picture I captured is one of my favorite shots i’ve capture of Great Falls up to this point.

After capturing that photo I headed towards overlook 3 and started shooting video. I been playing around with my camera video settings I been trying to learn so I can start filming YouTube videos. As I was in the middle of filming this a lady walk up to the overlook and started filming a video as well with her iPhone. She ask me do you have an instagram and after a small interaction she let me know that it was safe to go to overlook 1. She said she was just there and she said there’s not much ice there. I turn off my video and headed towards there. I love the view from overlook 1 because you are so close to the waterfall that it makes you feel like you're right in top of the waterfall. After finishing taking all this photos I change my lens and headed towards the trails got in my car and came back home. As I was editing this photos I couldn’t help but wonder how much does this park change throughout the month. That’s when I started to consider capturing a couple photos each months to see this change visually and have this be a memory I have of this park. To see my vision though I needed to see if there is a visual change from month to month so I headed to Great Falls again on the beginning of February.

It was a cold February morning and I check the weather saw a bit of cloud cover but I didn’t think it will be an issue. This time around I got there a bit earlier as I wanted to try to capture a high dynamic range photo. I had just learn about it earlier in the back and I knew it would be best to try in in Great Falls. Due to the time of day sometimes I’m dealing with lighting situations that involve a high dynamic range and I had miss shots before because I couldn’t get enough light. If you aren’t familiar with HDR or high dynamic range is a technique for capturing a wider range of light in a dark photo. All you have to do is take a photo 1 stop under exposed, 1 photo perfectly exposed, and 1 photo 1 stop over exposed. You then go on to lightroom and merge this 3 photos to create a perfectly exposed photo. You can also use this technique when you are dealing with a situation where you have something place in front of your photo and you want everything perfectly focus to make sure there is no blurriness in your photo. The way you do this is to make sure you move your focus points around. You will focus on the closest part of your image, then focus on the middle part of your image, and finish focusing on the top part of your photo. For this photo light was perfect so I focus on the bottom of the overlook, then I focus on the waterfall and then I finish by focusing on the sky. I then merge all the photos together and everything was perfectly focused. This help me capture this stunning photo, I could not believe the results once I did this. With 2 months down already I am looking forward to March to see just how much everything’s change. I absolutely love the start that I have had this year and I hope to keep improving this year. If everything goes right this year I will have an amazing collage of photos and a wonderful memory as well. That is what I love about photography it has allowed me to push my artistic boundaries and has allowed me to witnessed this beautiful world. Capturing this beauty and creating art is what I dream about all my life. I am so happy that I have found my passion. I hope everyone in life gets a chance to experience just how good it feels to be doing something you love. We have 10 month until December I can’t wait for this month to come. Im not sure the kind of results I will have at the end of this year but I just like you am curious to see the results.

I hope everyone has a great week and happy presidents day!