On my final day in Ha Ha Tonka State Park, I decided I was going to explore and find a way to get to the water movement that Bobbie and I could hear, but not see. The evening before, I sat down with some maps and discovered a trail that should take me close, if not to where the sound was coming from.
The hike was not long, but it was an interesting hike … up a steep grade, then a winding, rocky trail through some gigantic boulders (passing “Balanced Rock”), then down a winding trail. At the end of the trail, the woodlands opened up to a wonderful scene … water rushing over boulders, as the underground spring entered the Niangua Arm of the Lake of the Ozarks! Here are a few “HDR” (High Dynamic Range, I’ll explain later) images I captured:
And at this point, the spring water enters the lake, where fall colors lined the lake :
A beautiful, fall scenic from the lake! As I mentioned, all of these images were “HDR” images. HDR is a technique often used to create an image that combines all range of tones throughout multiple, identical images (all exposed a bit differently), resulting in a single image where the range of the tones of the image is greatly expanded. This is most useful when the range of tones in a scene range from near black (i.e., shadows/shade), through the mid-tones, and even very bright highlights (i.e., in these images, the often bright rock walls).
In another post, I will share some more images from this area. Besides capturing images for HDR work, I also captured images for “Focus Stacking”. More on that later.
Photographic Equipment Used:
- Canon 5D Mark III body
- Canon 28-135mm IS lens and Tamron 17mm, f/2.8 lens
- Bogen 3221 tripod, with ballhead
- ISO 100 (used slow ISO to help “slow down” the water movement)
- Aperture f/22 and f/32
- Shutter variable, ~1/4 sec. to 0.7 sec.