Powderhorn Falls was one of my favorite falls I visited during my trip up to the UP recently. I was at them for about an hour and didn’t see a single person the entire time which allowed me to take my time and not feel rushed with people coming and going.

Location

The falls are located on Powderhorn Road a short distance north of Highway 2. I visited them on my way back from visiting Potawatomi and Gorge Falls. Copper Peak was also along that stretch and I recommend people check that out when visiting the falls as it was really cool, even though a bit expensive at $20.

Powderhorn Falls doesn’t appear to be located in a park or anything official like that. There’s a trail across from a sign labeled Flintlock Road. You can park your car on the apron of the road nearby as well. One nice thing about the falls is there was a rope tied to trees to help you descend into the gorge. Most other locations have observation decks but nothing to help you get into the gorge, presumably, the park service doesn’t want you scaling 100 foot cliffs to get down to the riverbed.

Composition

Since I was alone, I spent a fair amount of time walking back and forth trying to find the best angle to shoot the falls. The river take a sharp 90 degree turn after the falls. The other issue is there is step rock cliffs facing the falls which would make it difficult to take photos in that location. Much like Miner Falls, I ended up going further down stream to get my shot. I find that getting the falls at an angle helps give them some depth as opposed to a straight on shot. You can also use the river as a leading line to the falls. I found a nice patch of foliage in front of me to use as a foregroun subject.

One random note: during my visit, my $300 Formatt-Hitech polarizer randomly decided to fall off and landed in the water. Fortunately it land just right that the water broke its fall before it could hit any rocks. I believe this photo was taken after that happened. When it first fell, I assume it was going to be scratched and that would be the end of it.

Post Processing

I ran my 3 sets of exposures at -2, 0 and +2 through Photomatix first. Next I did the same with a set of ISO 800 images. I used these higher shutter speed images to blend the slower shutter speed photo together in Photoshop for the foliage. My long exposure was 25 seconds long so the trees and grass had swayed around a lot in the wind. By taking a faster shutter speed image, I could blend that in for the greenery. This technique is something I’ve been doing more of lately and I feel it’s one of those things many hobbyist landscape photographers don’t bother with, but it’s one of those things professionals will do with long exposure waterfall shots.

Another technique I used while shooting was to lower my camera to ISO 50. I know most people recommend not doing this but it was easier to lower the ISO than to change my ND filter from the 6 stop to the 10 stop. The let me go from a 10-15 second exposure to 25 seconds. I wanted to get really long tails of the water.

Software Used

Lightroom

Photomatix

Photoshop

Techniques Used

Focus Stacking

High-Dynamic-Range

Have a Question?