Paulina Falls near Bend, Oregon

Paulina Falls are located at Newberry National Volcanic Monument in Oregon.

When it comes to landscapes, few things excite me more than waterfalls.  While exploring them from a safe distance, often with a safety fence and possible platform installed, which has my wife's approval, I love climbing around in the lower falls area, photographing the surging waters upstream.  And few places are as exciting to explore as the waterfalls found at Newberry National Volcanic Monument.

It is often not possible to get to the lower falls areas without breaking local laws and safety guidelines, but fortunately, the falls here are relatively easy to explore.  Steep cliffs, friable and unstable rock surfaces, and hazardous slopes all spell potential doom for those who disregard posted warnings.  However, with caution and sure-footedness, one can move easily among the boulders.  

I needed my ultra-wide-angle lens to capture the scene before me.  The above image does not quite portray the experience, as distortion fools you into thinking that the first falls are farther away than the second one.  The fact is that a normal lens could not begin to capture the scene as held in my mind.  A panorama may have been in order, but I shot this with my Nikon D70 in 2006.  Doing panoramas in Photoshop was something I had not yet explored.

I played with the above (left) image and used perspective and skew controls to warp the upper waterfalls to something that was more in line with reality.  It gives you an idea of how spectacular the original scene was.

Even this is somewhat mild compared to the real thing.  I hope to return one day and do a better job the second time around.

Thanks for reading.

Eric Svendsen     www.ericspix.com