Fall reflections on the Chocorua River

Welcome back foliage fans, last week I was talking about the dam in the Chocorua River and some of the shots you can get there. This week we’re going to work our way upstream 100yds… Yup, that’s it, a hundred yards.

Fall reflection on the Chocorua river in Tamworth county New Hampshire, New England Photography — Fall reflection on the Chocorua river

From Tamworth Pond, you head west on 113 and you shouldn’t hit the gas too hard since within a hundred yards (maybe less) you will be pulling over again (welcome to my world, hit the gas, hit the brake, hit the gas, well you get the picture…)

Anyway, you will see a guard rail on the right and if you are there at the right time, you will see fall colors running up and downstream through the trees. In looking upstream, you are looking towards Chocorua River where it goes off around the bend to wind its way past more fall colors.

It’s still only 8:47 in the morning so the sun is still pretty low in the sky and it’s coming from the direction of the dam downriver.

Exploring the River Bank

This is spot “B” on the map at the bottom of the article. I found a spot and pulled over on the side of the road. The last time I visited, the area was not posted as private property or no trespassing but keep your eyes open. I felt like I was of the road pretty far and not in anyone’s yard.

I went through some low brush and I was able to get a good view up the river (to the left) till you see the bend to the right. and looking to the right, the river begins to open into the pond that you saw from the other end.

I didn’t see this in the afternoon, but I believe with the sun coming in from the left, most of these shots would not be as good and too dark. I would go to the lake (Chocorua or Little Pond) to photograph in the afternoon.

Actual versus HDR (High Dynamic Resolution)

The one on the left is the way the camera saw it. But the swamp maple at the edge of the water was as bright a red as I’ve ever seen… So to answer the question, yes, I do play with my images to make them as close to what I saw that day.

Some of you will say, “why can’t I get mine to look like Jeff’s?” Well, when I’m shooting during Autumn (Sept-Nov) and reporting, I tend to show you “limited” processed images, except for minor changes. But I do tend to shoot 3 or 5 bracketed exposure shots for each image and this means the camera will shoot 3-5 rapid-fire shots in the space of a second. These images range from over-exposed to under-exposed in increments.

Then I blend them together, and this presents one blended image with greater contrast and depth than a single shot usually shows. This shot below is a Comparison between straight from the camera and HDR. Unprocessed images (not Jpegs but RAW images) are bland representations of the scene. They need to be “punched” up in order to be more like what we saw.

The reason I do this is that the best thing you can do to your fall pictures is to raise the contrast which will deepen the blacks and this will also make the colors pop more. You’ll notice I did not say I raised the saturation… If I do my shots right, I don’t feel any need to raise the saturation which can create those unrealistic images that you will see in social media.