I’ve been working on a series for about 2 years now called The Path of Least Resistance. The study was born in my head shortly after moving to Portland (the first time) and visiting a bunch of the waterfalls, rivers, and tributaries in the region. While the waterfalls themselves are usually the main draw for visitors, I find myself mesmerized by the characteristics of running water as it flows over, under, and around obstacles like rocks and tree limbs. So for these few years, I’ve been capturing hundreds of these instances and am working on a little project that encapsulates my favorites.

I took this photo yesterday afternoon with Brian Bonham. We were initially a bit discouraged when we arrived at Wahclella Falls because the sun was out in full force, creating some very harsh shadows and mottled light. It was Brian who started double stacking filters, which required extra long shutter speeds and provided some truly ethereal results. I followed suit, realizing that his idea made it easy to salvage the day. With this photo, I stacked a 3-stop IRND filter on top of my 10-stop IRND filter, both made my the fine folks at Formatt-Hitech. This let me drag the shutter of my Sony A7 to 30-seconds… more than enough time to get some fun results. Afterwards, I edited the photo in Nik Analog Efex Pro and Lightroom 5.4.