How to Actually Find and Shoot Waterfall Photos (Instead of Just Driving to Obvious Ones)

How to Actually Find and Shoot Waterfall Photos (Instead of Just Driving to Obvious Ones)

Most of my Photoshop work lives in the post-processing phase. I’m the guy who gets handed a raw file and is expected to make something beautiful out of it, which means I’ve developed a pretty warped view of photography. I tend to underestimate how much the shot itself matters because, hey, I can fix it in post, right? Wrong. Embarrassingly wrong, actually. The more time I spend working on landscape files, the more I realize that the photographers who give me the cleanest, most intentional raw files to work with are the ones who thought hard about composition before they ever touched a shutter button.

Stop Waiting for Perfect Light — Shoot Wide Open Instead

Stop Waiting for Perfect Light — Shoot Wide Open Instead

There’s a specific kind of creative block I run into about once a month. I’ve got a shoot, I’ve got a location, and nothing looks interesting. I’m staring at perfectly fine subject matter thinking “this is fine” while producing work that is, in fact, extremely fine. Mediocre. Safe. The kind of stuff that fills a hard drive and never sees the light of a portfolio. The fix, more often than not, isn’t a new plugin or a fancier Photoshop technique.