Alberta Falls

Author's Comments

The walk in is short enough that you will arrive before you have settled into the altitude, and that is part of the problem. Most people show up at Alberta Falls without their eyes adjusted yet. They photograph the obvious frame, the one that puts the whole thirty feet of cascade in the middle of the image, and they leave inside ten minutes. The falls deserve more. June is the month if you want power. The snowmelt comes off the high country and Glacier Creek runs hard through that narrow granite gorge, and the sound of it fills the trees in a way that does not come through in photographs. What does come through, if you are patient, is the texture. I work close here. A long lens, a neutral density filter, and an exposure long enough to let the water turn to silk against the dark wet granite. The detail shots are what I keep. The wide landscape rarely survives the edit. Come at first light. The trailhead fills by eight in summer and the falls themselves see steady traffic from breakfast onward, but if you are on the trail by five-thirty you will have an hour of quiet and the gorge will still be in shadow, which is exactly what you want for the long exposures. The spruce and fir close in tight on either side and the light, when it finally reaches the water, comes filtered and green. That is the photograph worth waiting for. Not the falls themselves but the moment the sun finds them.

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