Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Solstice



This happens to me every time I go to this particular waterfall. (Well, it's only been a handful of times but, apparently, enough times for me to remark on it.)

Yesterday I drove up to the Delaware Water Gap to shoot frozen waterfall photos. By way of backstory (and since the post was lost when I lost my old blog). DWG was where I shot my first landscape photos completely in manual. I told the camera what to do, and you wouldn't you know it, it did what I wanted. (Few things do, so forgive me if I gloat a minute.) On another trip to another set of falls, a fellow photographer suggested I might want to try and get some photos of falls during Winter.

Perfect! What better time to begin than on the Solstice, back where I first started, right?

Well...

Raymondkills Falls and I have a bit of a rocky past, literally and figuratively. My first trip was late Spring/early Summer. On my way there, I saw a bear not too far from the Falls, and had to crawl through mud, gravel and rocks to get to the base of the Falls - only to be met by Yuppies from NYC who took the stairs down. (Don't get me started. Just... Don't.) Being the clever sort, I found that there were stairs on my next visit, and it was these stairs I tried to use yesterday.

We had a blizzard in these parts; I'm sure you heard about it. Apparently that fact was completely lost on me.

I make it to the stairs, but not after having to go back to the car to get my monopod to use as a hiking stick, which helped some until I got to the "steps". I forgot that they were actually cleverly placed stones in keeping with the rustic look of the place. (Really! Some people really feel the need to go to extremes!)

Yep, you guessed it. Slid down the first set of steps on my behind and what was left of my dignity to get to the first landing. I then crawled and used my monopod as a pick to get to the second landing. I could hear the Falls laughing at me as I kept this up for oh, about way longer than I should have.

In case you're wondering, the shots here aren't from the Falls. And the lesson for the Solstice is just because you can see the photo, it doesn't mean you can always get to it.

So you win, RK Falls. For now.