This past Monday, October 14th, I took a day off from work and made a trip up to Red Rock, PA and hiked through Ricketts Glen State Park. I haven’t been to the park since my childhood years when my family would take our pop-up camper to various locations throughout the Northeastern United States. I vaguely remember the trip but the waterfalls are something that are very hard to forget. There are 22 named waterfalls and many more smaller ones that can be seen among the trails. I arrived at the evergreen parking lot off of route 118 just before sunrise to try to capture the falls during the best possible light. I started my hike first up hill following the glen leigh trail and then the highland trail until it brought me to the ganuga glen trail which took me back down hill toward the area in which I parked. I was hoping to see the Autumn colors in their peak conditions. There was plenty of yellow and patches of red along with some green leaves which did not start to change yet. The water level was not as high as it can be but for the fall season in which I visited there was pretty good flow of the water. Just like with any hiking trail with water near by you have to be careful of slippery rocks so I made sure to watch my step along the way. I did get my shoes wet a few times but only because I had to get in position for a better composition. I highly recommend the park to anybody looking to experience mother nature at her finest!
The photo above is one of my favorites from the trip. The waterfall is named “Ozone Falls” which drops 60′ and is the second largest within the park. During my photographing of the scenes I tried to find a good foreground element in addition to the flowing water. The moss on these rocks was just perfect for that. I started with an HDR image of -2,0 and +2 exposures. I then brushed in an adjustment on the moss of added clarity and contrast with slightly dropping the exposure a tad. I then took the resulting image into photoshop and cleaned up a nasty tree branch which was in the middle of the water stream which I thought took away from the image. Yes, I know some people frown upon post work like this but I for sure am not one of them. I then finally took the image into Nik Color Efex Pro 4 and added a few filters to tweak the scene more to my liking.
Below are a few more of my favorite images from the day. The black and white image I created using Nik Silver Efex Pro 2. I really like that the leaves in the grey tones, the rocks mainly dark with the bright white water streams. If you have any questions about my processing of these images feel free to leave a comment at the bottom of this page or fill out the form on my contact page.
The featured photo above in addition to those below will be available on my photos page for sale if you are interested. Most of them will be within the waterscapes gallery and the one image of the trail without any water in sight can be found within my landscapes gallery.
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- Glen Leigh Trail
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- Wyandot Falls
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- Shawnee Falls
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- Mohican Falls
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- Onondaga Falls
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- Ozone Falls
