McKinney Falls State Park - Upper Falls with Variable Shutter Speeds

Not too long ago my wife had a meeting for work in Austin at the Airport Hilton hotel.  I typically drive (or fly) with her to these meetings and while away the time taking pictures somewhere.  To my amazement, not a five minute drive from Bergstrom is this state park, complete with waterfalls, called McKinney Falls State Park.  After dropping her off for the day's meeting I made a beeline...

And it was worth every moment!  This is what they call the Upper Falls.  It had not been raining much, so the water was contained within these mini-gorges, making them look a bit bigger than they actually are; it was in fact easy to cross the falls by stepping from one rock to the next.

I got there early and it was a school day, so was able to capture people-free pics, at least at the beginning of my time there.  The circumstances also allowed me the freedom to pick any spot and take some time to do a little experimenting.  This being a waterfall, the most likely way to experiment was with shutter speed!  I sat down on a rock with a good vantage point, steadied the Bigger Cahoona placing elbows on knees, and shot using a variety of settings.  If you'll notice, the shutter speed for the four pics posted here are included in the lower-left corner of each picture, with the fastest (1/250th of a second) above down to the slowest (1/6th of a second) at the bottom.  Note that these were taken without a tripod other than the bones of my frame, and were not sharpened at all in Photoshop.  You can be the judge as to which looks best:

McKinney Falls State Park - Picnic Area

Austin winter scene, on the pathway from the Upper Falls back to the car.  Even if it's snowy and cold somewhere, winter continues to be my favorite time of year to shoot, and I hardly take notice of the temperature when busy with a camera in my hands.

I did go to the Lower Falls but they weren't nearly as picturesque, and besides there were all kinds of young kids around on some sort of field trip.  Thus, the Upper Falls and environs are where most of the blogworthy pics were to be captured...

McKinney Falls State Park - Favorite View of Upper Falls

Later in the day, when the sun was out full, I returned to the Upper Falls and captured this view - naturally my favorite because it is a picture of something through something.  The falls in the shot below are silkier, but this time because of bokeh rather than manipulation of shutter speed:

McKinney Falls State Park - Zooming In with the Bigger Cahoona

One of the things I like to do is compare shots to illustrate the power of a zoom lens.  In the shot above I'm standing in a huge expanse of rock near the Lower Falls fully zoomed out to 28mm with my middling, "vacation" lens.  Observe the orange rectangle.  Moments after taking this picture I zoomed in fully to 300mm, the frame from which is below:

Now observe the orange rectangle in this picture.  Combining the incredible reach of the lens with the huge pixel count of the D850, the potential of capturing shots from a distance is seen when this second picture is cropped to 100%, or "Actual Pixels" in Photoshop.  This is an advantage to someone like me - not for people shots, but for whatever may be encountered during a wildlife shoot:

McKinney Falls State Park - Another Upper Falls View

Here I'd walked over to a different outcropping - this and the frame below (at 1/15 sec) were completely hand-held when captured:

McKinney Falls State Park - Red Berry Sprig

As a testament to the incredible pixel-capturing power of the D850's sensor, this pic was cropped out of the frame posted yesterday.  Though not perfect, it's still a decent shot that occupies as much memory space as an entire picture captured with my first digital camera, the Fujifilm Finepix 3800, which began my journey into digital photography.  Even so, the photo you see to the right represents less than 3% of the entire frame!  Yes, the number of pixels here is 2.56% of the original JPEG from which yesterday's post was derived.

In past communications with real pro photographers, and in comments and posts encountered during my research on where to go for my first full-frame camera, it was stated over and over that a photographer - especially just a hobbyist such as myself - should not get hung up on equipment.  It's all about the lens, they say.  While I agree that the choice of lens makes a huge difference, I could not disagree more that sensor size/resolution does not make a difference.  One article even referred to "resolution heads" as nut jobs that think they need all those pixels.  Well, here we are.  With just a middling lens, every time I open pics captured with my now-beloved D850 I am amazed at the quality, depth, and potential of the keepers.  Not to mention the time it saves in the reduced amount of tinkering needed for color adjustment, shadow/highlight rendering - and yes, sharpening, even with hand-held shots.  Maybe it's because I'm an amateur, but I'll argue for buying something like the Bigger Cahoona every time to anyone who is looking to take their photography to the next level.

McKinney Falls State Park - Fishing Lures

Downtown Austin 2022 - Saint Mary Cathedral Spires #1

As per usual, when the wife travels to attend a conference, I take some vacation time and tag along.  While she's in her meetings I'm free to wander with the Bigger Cahoona to either scout or take photographs.  This is how I got the pics for the Denver 2017 series, the McKinney Falls series, the Austin series posted June through September of 2020, and many others.

This particular conference was two full days with a stay of three nights in Austin, so I decided to use the first full day just to scout.  After her meetings started, on that first day I took a gander around the neighborhood, which was on the southern edge of downtown, then trekked deeper into downtown to see what might be worth capturing the next day.  Photographically I was armed with only my iPhone 11 to capture references such as street intersections and landmarks for the return trip.  And as is usually the case, several times I regretted not having the D850, but didn't yet know how safe it would be hauling that thing around while by myself.  Turns out it wasn't so bad.

So here we are with what was captured on that second day.  There were some pretty interesting things going on - such as the construction of the tallest building to date in the city - but this is what caught my eye first: the juxtaposition of the old Saint Mary Catholic Cathedral, built in the 1800's, against the modern Texas Tribune building behind it.

McKinney Falls State Park - Red Berries

Always trying to get a decent pic of the red berries on these bushes...this time all of the background colors were completely desaturated, which allowed a little play room to manipulate color:

McKinney Falls State Park - Twigs and Branches

This being winter, lots of patterns to capture among the twigs and branches.  Seeing the spikes, the pic below must be of an osage orange, or horse apple, tree:

McKinney Falls State Park - Sprig of Many Colors

Why not color-play with just a sprig?  The collage above was easy; much more tedious was mixing them all to appear in the same frame...