Mud Ranch’s Real Dirt

Hubby is planning on another trip up to Mountain Meadow this weekend — if all goes well.  He’s really busy at work lately (thank God!) and busy building machines as fast as he can.  I am so thankful for the work during our recession (or should I say, depression?)

Anyway, as I mentioned in the Mountain Meadow post, Annie fell asleep in the truck coming down the mountain and the road follows this creek all the way.  Hubby took advantage of the sleeping baby and decided to walk a ways down the creek while I stayed up on the road, following along snapping pictures.

The truck, of course, was constantly in view and the dogs were baby sitting too.  They do such a good job.  But directly to the left of the truck in the picture above was a really beautiful water fall cascading down the mountain side.  I took several pictures of it, playing with my shutter speeds…

The first one I took was probably at 1/1000th of a second which is very fast and froze the water droplets.  I quickly dropped my speeds down to 1/80 then 1/60 then 1/40 then at 1/20 was finally happy with the results as seen above.  I like the blurred motion of the running water — it looks smooth.  The only trick was getting a sharp photo, hand holding with a telephoto lens (weight) at 1/20th of a second is not all that easy.  I believe I also had this at ISO 400, once I get up to 800, the pictures get a bit grainy.

This was the spot right above the larger drop, where it just trickled through the rocks.

Here’s a spot on the creek where I did the 1/20th of a second as well, the blurred motion of the water is seen again.

Oh, and of course, Hubby enjoying his fishing.  He is one of those that always says, “One more cast…”  It can take us about 45 minutes to leave a fishing hole — especially if something bites.  But at this moment, I wasn’t in any hurry, it was nice to be surrounded by the sound of rushing water and the peace of nature.