Back in February 2009, myself and 2 friends (Andrew Catsaitis and Andrew Murrell) met up at Sommersby Falls on the Central Coast of NSW for a photo expedition after a lot of heavy rain in recent days.
Only a month earlier, the three of us were again at Sommersby Falls, but this photo session was much better – the light was brilliant, the falls were flowing with much more water after a few days of heavy rain, and it even started raining heavily on us while we were there. It made for some tricky shots at times, trying to juggle the umbrella to keep the camera dry, while framing and focusing and at times, being almost knee deep in water!
For some reason I didn’t finish processing these at the time, and now, 10 months later, I finally made the time to finish processing these – and I’m glad I did. These are my best ever photos of Sommersby Falls.
All photos were taken with my Canon 20D and Sigma 17-70mm lens, and they are all 3-shot bracketed (+2/0/-2) HDR (tonemapped). Processed using Photomatix and Photoshop CS4.
There's 24 photos in total - to see them all (and to see 1200px wide less compressed versions) please visit:
Quite special! Very hard to pick a favorite from the set. They're all awesome. Incredible colors and blends. I like how you've accentuated the reds saturation against the green in some of the shots.
Do you have any that aren't processed with Photomatix?
I think you've got some really nice, vivid and sharp data there, with strong compositions. Should be able to take a single image and make it look even better than what you've presented here.
My favorite is the 5th (portrait, swirling water at the bottom). I think that's a great shot having the distance, misty feel, etc.
I find the HDR a little too obvious in many of the others for my tastes, making them look not quite real. But, you nailed the colour and clarity .. and nice smooth flowing water with the slow shutter speeds
The lizzard one is great, and would have been my favorite except the rock and foreground trunk look more sharply focused than the lizard, if it were the other way around it'd be a winner for me Perhaps it's just lighting - that the lizard is sharp but being darker has the "focus" taken off him? Interesting. Still a good shot though, so hard to get wildlife in such convenient locations
Overall, great shots though, I'd be happy to have shots like those myself So good to get out to these places and get the shots
Absolutely beautiful and if Gosford Council runs a annual photo competition, be sure to
enter them!
As Roger mentioned and you would have been aware of, it was a pity with the lizard.
Just a tad more depth of field and it might have done it, but appreciate how hard
that can be with available light and you might have had the lens opened right up.
Otherwise it would have been a perfect shot and possibly the best of the lot.
Such is life.
Though not everyone's cup of tea, I like the impressionist feel that you made with the
Photomatix/CS4 processing to these shots and being familiar with the shooting location,
I enjoyed this new take on it.
Mike - that's one of the better waterfall landscape shots I've seen in a while. I like both the lighting and the processing and the DOF and composition and also the water flow effect are done to perfection. Super set.
Lovely set. Not sure what it is about HDR, but I always think it needs just a little more contrast after the tonemapping to bring it back to what you expect to see. Looks like a great location for those milky flowing water shots, and as the others have said, the composition is great.
They are great photos! Photography and astronomy are both new hobbies of mine and there is so much inspiration and talent around here, I hope I can get to the stage where I can take such great photos as those, they're brilliant!
It's always interesting when you look back at your photos a couple of days or weeks later - some that I didn't like the first time around, now I enjoy more, and some that I really liked, now look a bit over-processed or over-saturated.
Overall I'm happy with the set - there was a lot of photos to go through. I only uploaded 8 to this thread, the others are on my blog. It was a great day out, that's for sure. A lovely place to photography in the right light with the right amount of water.
The lizard one was a tough one - I couldn't focus properly on the lizard because of the lack of light. I agree the whole shot would've been better if the lizard was in sharp focus rather than the tree in front.
Wow. It's a beautiful set Mike.
My favourites are the longer distance one and the lizard.
Imagine what you could get experimenting with other
daylight like sunset reds/ violets, moonlight etc.
My best Somersby Falls Photos
Very hard to pick a favorite from the set. They're all awesome. Incredible colors and blends. 
I like how you've accentuated the reds saturation against the green in some of the shots.
Perhaps it's just lighting - that the lizard is sharp but being darker has the "focus" taken off him? Interesting. Still a good shot though, so hard to get wildlife in such convenient locations 
