As you head towards The Grand Canyon of Yellowstone there is a place on the Gibbon River called Gibbon Falls. In winter these particular falls don’t melt, nor does an ice cone form and its base. The falls over at the Grand Canyon is a perfect example of an ice cone, every year there happens to be one and it differs in height depending on the temperatures. Well Gibbon Falls is only 84ft tall but it’s a pretty cool fall. It’s very wide with many rapids. There are mutlpile ways to photograph the falls, most prefer to go tight with either a 70-200 or a 200-400. Going wide doesn’t work all that great because the falls itself is in a canyon surrounded with trees. Personally i went with the 200-400 so i could go close and get detail shots of select rapids and ice that was forming.
No real trick to these shots, the only challenging part was deciding what elements to include knowing they would eventually end up black and white. To get the water blurred was nothing tricky, merely dropped down to f22 with -1/2 exposure comp and with the lens resting on a tripod it was easy to get a sharp image. The important thing to keep in mind is that it’s winter, and certain elements won’t be there in summer. In these situations including those elements like the ice shelf or the area beneath the tree covered in snow is important. This is something to keep in mind on any shoot, what will always be there and what won’t be.
Images captured with Nikon D3, AF-S Nikkor 200-400 VrI, on Lexar UDMA Digital Film