Lynn WiezyckiOn a rainy, early November day, I flew to Atlanta, met one of our group there, and drove for 3 hours to Sky Valley, GA. After we got somewhat settled, our group of eight started our 4 days in north Georgia and southern North Carolina. We were on a waterfall-plus adventure.
Never wanting to waste any time, our leader, Jim, had us drive about 1 mile from the houses we rented to a waterfall that was right in Sky Valley.
Mud Creek Falls is not a huge waterfall but it is big enough to get some good practice for the other larger falls to come! You can drive within 100′ of the middle of the falls. We hopped out, grabbed our gear, and started our waterfall adventure. All of these images were made with my Nikon Z7 with the Nikon F mount 16-35mm lens on the FTZ unless otherwise indicated.
This falls has a large fallen tree at the base of this section of the falls. Several of the group made their way out there to get a more central view!
Unfortunately, we were too late for the fall colors on the trees (too many storms the previous few weeks) so I had to settle for fallen fall leaves along the sides on the rocks.
After getting the full view of the falls I started zooming into interesting portions.
From there I looked for even smaller areas that made an interesting composition. In this instance, I converted the image to black and white to emphasize the motion of the water.
As the others in the group moved around and some even put on waders to get some other angles, I decided to zoom in even more on the still somewhat colorful leaves. I sat on the bank at the base of this section of the falls next to a small area where there was a slowly spinning eddy. I grabbed a leaf and threw it into the water. Shooting with a long exposure of 4 seconds I was trying to capture the leaf as it moved and spun in the eddy.
I was not too crazy about the one above so I continued trying…
I continued trying this until I had chucked every leaf within my reach into the water. I found one more leaf that I thought might work as it was brighter and larger than the others I had tried. So I threw the large orange leaf in the water and ended up with my favorite image of the day!
Trying to make images of moving anything is a challenge, you just have to keep trying and hope you end up with something you like!
The light started to get even darker than it normally is in this spot so we packed up and drove back to the houses to eat and get ready for the next day.
Jim informed us we would be driving to North Carolina (not very far as Sky Valley is right on the border) and we would be trying to get to 4 waterfalls the next day! He told us the first one was the hardest hike and they would get progressively easier through the day! Oh! Boy! Something to look forward to!
I will be posting this trip as a daily journal since we visited so many places.
If you are in the Sky Valley area, this is a wonderful place to stay as it is in the middle of a lot of waterfalls (this part of the US has more waterfalls than any other part of the country). It is primarily a golf community but there are houses and condos available through VRBO and Airbnb. The community is not gated so anyone can access Mud Creek Falls.
Click on any image to see a larger version OR visit my gallery to see and purchase prints and other items with these images: Gallery Link: Mud Creek Falls
My next post will be Day 2, including the great trek, first thing in the morning!
That is all for now!
Lynn
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