Day 31 of the 365 Project: A Waterfall on the Hillside Along West Valley Road
I May Take Photos for the Adventure
This summer I found a few tall waterfalls in ravines on the west side of Otisco Lake. Today I decided to take a drive and see how they looked.
As you can see in the image, there wasn’t much water flow.
I thought I might go to a much larger one close by, but once I looked at the steep ravine sides and the number of trees that had toppled across the stream it looked like an adventure to get up to where I could even see the stream running down the bedrock.
The amount of snow, and trees I’d have to climb over, the ice along the side of the running water, the steepness of the hill, and the fact I couldn’t see the beginning of the ravine made it feel like an adventure I had to jump into.
I liked the challenge of the climb and the chance to get a photograph no one has ever made plus Caden loves streams.
Sometimes I wasn’t sure I could get to a place to take a photo. I took a few on the way up. What you are looking at in the image is the top 20 feet or so of the ravine and falls. Overall the ravine was 130 to 150 feet tall with the water running down the bare bedrock in the sharp V that the ravine formed.
I was standing in the streambed right at the base of the almost vertical rock in the foreground with the camera looking upward at a steep angle to get the image.
The Yellow Birch tree in the top left gives the falls some scale as to the height. And if you look close, you can see a cement bridge at the top where a road crosses the stream as it switchbacks down the hill.
Was there a better place to take a photo today? Yes, for sure about 5 minutes away. But driving to a waterfall to take an image is boring instead of making an adventure of hiking up a steep ravine to see what is at the top.
That is why I love photography. For me, it always isn’t the final image. Yes, they are fun to take, and creating a good photo feels great, but…
The best part of photography, and this 365 Project, is to get me outside to new places and hopefully find adventures along the way.
Day 31 is in the books!
