Photographing nature within certain “hours of operation” is tricky at best. As you most likely already know, light is everything in photography. My first attempt to capture Toccoa Falls was in the late afternoon and the lighting was simply impossible. I decided to be there when they open the doors and see what I found. They don’t open the doors until 10:00 AM EDT. The sun is already very high in the sky at that time. The morning light is almost as bad as the afternoon light.
With all that said, I used the LR Enfuse plugin in Lightroom 5 to create a HDR image from only two different exposures. The first I exposed for the cliff face that was in the direct sunlight. The second I exposed for the trees to the right that were in the shadows. I captured this image using my 24-70mm f/2.8, tripod mounted and using a circular polarizer. Thanks for stopping by.
Toby Gant's Photography Blog 
beautiful and worth the wait. Nice shot 🙂
It’s still a beautiful photo, and the falls are lovely! If you are ever out hiking in Oregon, be sure to visit Multnomah Falls, about 30 minutes east of Portland in the Mount Hood/Columbia Gorge area.
It is on my list. I plan to spend several days in the area when I go. There is so much to see there.
Gorgeous capture – definitely worth the revisit! 🙂
Thanks, Joanne!
What a lovely shot…the colours are pure summer. How strange to me that these falls are behind closed doors….
It really seems a shame to me. It would be wonderful to shoot these falls in the blue or golden hours.
It has worked well – love the colour of the rocks and I suppose they could easily have been burnt out without your knowledge
Good point, Diana. I adjusted my white balance on the original captures before processing them. So, the colors should be accurate.
The middle of the day is not so great to take pics of mountains if the wun washes out all the interesting details! Am happy you got some this back with this attempt – a beautiful waterfall!
Nice shot. Looks beautiful. Have you worked with ND filters here?
I did use one my previous visit. But, my split ND is a 3 stop and there was a 10 stop difference in the lighting both times of day. Thanks for the suggestion.
hi toby,
good to ave you dropping by again recently and the many likes!
much appreciated. i just got myself a set of CP and 3-stop ND filters recently, now just need to identify a couple of nice local waterfalls to shoot then with. cheers!
I can’t wait to see your captures!
Wow. Nice perspective.
Thanks for the kind words, Crystal.