Back to Chapel Falls

After posting those photos of the frozen waterfalls at Chapel Falls, taken last January, I decided I had to go see what they looked like THIS January. So two days ago I braved the 17 degree temperatures and drove up to Chapel Falls. It's interesting to contrast this photo...



... with the first one from my last entry and see the different shapes the water froze into. I think, too, that the fact that the left side of the waterfall in the newer photo is free-flowing water is a good indication that even though it was 17 degrees the day I took that photo, we have had, overall, a milder winter this time around. Last January that entire waterfall was frozen, with only a little flowing water visible through some cracks and holes in the ice.

Of course, while there I couldn't resist the urge to take some shots to turn into panoramas, so here's a panoramic view from near the top of the upper falls...



,,, and another one from a spot near the lower falls. -- PL

Icy waterfall

One of my favorite nature spots in this area is Chapel Falls, a series of small cascading waterfalls outside of Williamsburg, MA. It's a beautiful spot at all times of the year, but definitely takes on a kind of eerie, severe beauty in the winter, when the cold temperatures render the rushing waters into weird and wild ice forms.

I took some photos of the falls last January, and just ran across them this week. Here's a view of the largest of the falls, put together from two photos (with the help of PanoramaMaker, of course!).



I wanted to try to eliminate the overly blue cast to this other photo of the falls…



… so I opened it in Photoshop and ran one of my favorite quick "Adjustments" on it, "Auto Levels" (Command-Shift-L). I've had good luck with this in the past, but in this case it produced a somewhat bizarre and unexpected effect, as you can see here.



The "bloody falls" effect is creepy… but also kind of cool. I have no idea WHY it happened when I made that adjustment. -- PL