Upper Provo Falls

[remoteman45]

After seeing Summit's post on Provo Canyon's Upper Falls, I got inspired and decided to go see the area again. Saturday over the July 4th weekend, I headed up the trail taking some of my canyoneering gear for the "just in case" scenario and was glad I did. I went up the east side where the rope line was and with my camera gear and tripod in my pack I clipped into the hand line with a petzl shunt and climbed the cliff that goes up to the cooler upper falls area. It's not a particularly hard climb but a bit exposed and I was by myself so I was glad I took the precautions to get up and down safely. I also took two 50' statics and used them to come down the same spot as well as give me a hand line in a couple pretty steep sections coming down from higher up. I spent about 4 hours up there and got some nice shots. I was a bit wiped after all the scrambling but had a great time up there only seeing two other hikers all day. Most people have no clue what's way up in there. It was late afternoon in bright sun but with two ND filters and a circular polarizer I came away with these shots. Enjoy the pics

[tmartenst]

All good but the last one is especially fantastic. Nice work.

[accadacca]

Wow! You rocked the place!

[asdf]

great stuff man.
Good call on the static line.. that cliff is a big sketchy with a camera bag.
I still want to head up some night after work next week.

[blueeyes]

You guys do amazing things with your camera's. Thx for sharing.

[ibenick]

Stunning pics. I really need to figure out and invest in filters. Any advice on where to go to learn what I need? I've been googling and it seems so convoluted. ND .6 or .9? And I read that you can't really use filters on a wide angle lens because of vignetting... true?

[remoteman45]

My wide angle 11-22mm f2.8 that I shot all these with takes a 72mm filter and I was using at times a ND 3 and a ND 6 along with a circular polarizer and when zoomed all the way out I could see the rings so you have to shoot with that in mind when you compose your shots. Because I was shooting in broad daylight I had to do some experimenting with the combination of those filters as well as varying back and forth between shutter priority and aperture priority along with lots of different shutter speeds in both. I also shoot almost everything I do bracketted for HDR so I have options in post.

[asdf]

I get a really small amount of vignetting when shooting at 11mm (with my 11-16) when I have both my UV and ND .09 filters on. I just use the UV filter for protection and am too lazy to take it off because the vignetting is easily delt with by doing a 1-2% crop.

[ibenick]

What about quality of filters? There's such a huge range in price between the low-end and the high-end of the same filter. Have you had or heard of any problems with the cheaper ones? I've read a lot of people saying why put a cheap piece of glass on a nice lens but if it works, why not? My nicest lens is a Canon 10-22mm and my other most used lens is a Sigma 18-200 so it's not like I have really nice stuff. Hmmm...