BABY FALLS LEAP

Canon EOS Rebel XS, Canon 85mm 1.8 USM lens, ISO 800, f/3.2, 1/3200 sec

  After a wonderful date night with my wife, Melissa, she asked me when I was going to go out and take some more pictures. I told her I didn't know and hadn't really thought about it. She had to work the next day and usually that means that I would stay at home with the kids. With it being Sunday, I normally spend the day washing clothes and watching TV.
  Well, after sitting around til 10:00am or so, I noticed that the day was going to be overcast all day. It hadn't rained so I made the determination that it would be some prime weather to get water and long exposure pictures in the middle of the day. So I packed up the gear and headed down River Rd in the Cherokee National Forest.
  I stopped a couple of places and it rained on me on-and-off. I then drove to Baby Falls, mainly because there was a rest room there, and figured if I used my ND Fader Filter I could possibly produce a back eddy swirl underneath the falls. The water spins very well just down and to the right of the falls so the filter would allow me enough light blockage to get 8-15 seconds of shutter to obtain the Eddy.  I will show you the results of this shot in a later post.
  After catching my Eddy, I packed everything back up and was hiking back to the car when I noticed a truck that was stopped next to the road. I said hello and they said they were waiting for a group of people kayaking down the river. I immediately  scaled back down in front of the falls and waited for them. I switched from my wide angle lens to my 85mm prime both so I could get closer but also so I could stop action with the larger aperture.
  Sure enough here  they came. The group of 5 gathered together before the first young lady took the dive over the falls. I got shots of all of them taking their dives, one of them even went over backwards with a camera mounted on his helmet, with the very first one being my favorite.
  Baby Falls is only about 15 ft tall but the amount of water that pours over it is amazing, especially this time of year with all of the rain we have been getting. The roar from the water is incredible.
  My favorite thing about this shot is that I captured her in mid-fall. You can see the tremendous amount of water that surrounds her on her way down.
  I was so lucky to both decide to go out shooting today and to be at Baby Falls when these extreme athletes came riding through. It was the perfect end to a wet and fun afternoon.