Sunday, September 20, 2009

Hungarian Falls (Lower)

A close up side view of a cascading waterfall, with sandstone rock, in black and white.
Lessons learned from Hungarian Falls

There are many drops at Hungarian Falls, which is one of the easiest sets of waterfalls for people in the Houghton-Hancock area to visit. This is the largest of the drops, a very large vertical drop which is barely a dribble during most of the year.

During the spring, however, the lower falls are amazing. They are a regular torrent, and Kyle and I decided to head out there one mid-spring day to see what we could see. As it turns out, it is rather difficult to get near these falls in the spring: there are no regular paths, the stream below the waterfall is (unusually) full and treacherous, and the sides of the Hungarian gorge are steep and slick with a combination of snow, ice, and red, muddy clay.

On this particular day, we managed to monkey our way down to the falls, using a series of branches, rocks, roots, and sheer dumb luck. Once I got to the bottom, I discovered that my camera's battery was nearly dead! I had been intending to take a bunch of long exposures of the waterfalls, but those eat up battery life in a very unpleasant way. Instead, I spent my time mentally framing shots and planning my work very carefully. In the end, I took only very few shots, this being one of them. It was an excellent lesson in photography and the mental skills necessary.

1 comment:

dito said...

Love the waterfall!
The B&W also enhance the texture of blurry water ^^
Cheers
Radityo Pradipto
http://radityopradipto.zenfolio.com