My Beautiful Day - Winter Walk To Cascade Falls

Now that the winds have died down and temperatures are mild, I got out for a hike today along the Cascade Falls Trail in Patapsco Valley State Park. I took along my new camera to get some raw photos to play with in Affinity Photo, the software package I am trying out instead of buying into the Adobe Lightroom monthly subscription plan.

The trail starts along a small creek that meanders through the woods for the first half mile. As the elavation starts to drop off as you get closer to the Patapsco River, you start to get some small rapids as the water carves through the rock and picks up speed.

There’s still very little sign of spring and other than the rusty color of the dead leaves in the creek, the moss and lichen on the rocks, and the occasional evergreen tree, there’s not much color to work with.

Playing around with my new camera, I took nine raw files and used the stitching feature of Affinity Photo to combine them into one very large very detailed photo. I’m not crazy about how washed out it is, but at least I learned a new feature that will come in handy in the future. It took about a half hour on my iPad to stitch and render the files. I was surprised how easy it was. This photo was taken from the top of the hill looking down at the falls.

And here a a few more shots of the main falls from various distances. All shots were taken with my Sony Alpha 7ii camera.

Given that this was an early evening hike, these are my contributions to @juliank’s #goldenhourphotography #photocontests.

Below are the daily themes for the #photocontests.

Monday: #foodphotography and #animalphotography
Tuesday: #landscapephotography and #cityscapephotography
Wednesday: #architecturalphotography and #vehiclephotography
Thursday: #macrophotography and #colourfulphotography
Friday: #streetphotography and #portraitphotography
Saturday: #sportsphotography and #smartphonephotography
Sunday: #goldenhourphotography and #longexposurephotography