Potomac River's Great Falls June 2008

Great Falls is one of my favorite locations. I go there often, nearly 70 times in a couple years... Yeah, 70.

This would make a good magazine cover, I thought, so I pretended it was and made this:

(D300 RAW 14-bit, 1 shot HDR w/ photomatix from -2.3, 0, +2.3 RAW export to jpg.)

So, I've had the Nikon D300 for a while, and I've been in to HDR's for a while too. I've used my FujiFilm S5 and it's RAW files to make one shot HDR's before. Yesterday I decided to try the D300's 14-bit RAW mode, and shot a bunch of things at Great Falls from the Maryland side. The amount of extra data available from the 14-bit RAW by using the HDR processing software was quite amazing. I shot this in JPG+RAW(14-bit) and bracketed the sequence as well. The amount of data I was able to pull out of a single 14-bit RAW file was a real surprise to me. And now I'm pretty excited...

Here's a bunch of photos taken on 6/12/2008 at Great Falls National Park, from the Maryland side of the Potomac River.

Eagle Blur


Eagle Perched - hard to see, but it's there, just right of dead-center in the tree


Eagle in the river - overexposed, yeah, this was my safety shot, and he indeed flew off when I got closer.


This is the Bald Eagle Nestling, again from 6/12/2008


When I went to the main overlook on the MD side, no one else was there, and this vulture was perched on the railing looking towards the falls and the Great Blue Herons below...


While I was up river, I sat along the side of the river, and a couple of Herons came by to setup and start fishing, but they weren't too happy to see me, and waved off their landing approach, and took off.


Great Blue Heron working the Falls. This didn't come out as good as I'd hoped but these shots are all from the same day to tell a story, the day's story, so I'm ok with it. I know I've gotten Herons over the Falls shots before that I'm good with...


-Jon

Potomac River's Great Falls June 2008