Illume
Oregon · USA
It's not just epic mountain light that can be the reward for a painful pre-dawn wakeup call--a pretty waterfall bathed in golden-hour light will do plenty fine, too. Jeff Hobson and I pretty much had Punch Bowl Falls to ourselves for nearly an hour and a half before the weekend crowds came streaming in. It was only after the canyon was jam-packed with people that the sun cleared Benson Plateau to the east and flooded the canyon in the aureate light you see here. After a fashion I was able to steal a few all too fleeting moments with no one between me and the falls, and I fired off several consecutive 30-second frames that I later layered together to make the lazy stream of bubbles echoing from the whitewater more visible. This image, then, is the equivalent of about a 6-minute exposure, my last composition of Punch Bowl that morning before we beat a hasty retreat from the crescendo buzz of souls seeking refuge from the coming heat of day.
