Arethusa Falls

Author's Comments

The walk in is longer than the map suggests, partly because the brook keeps asking you to stop. Bemis runs alongside the trail for most of the climb, and there are at least three small cascades worth a frame before you ever reach the falls themselves. I have learned not to rush this approach. By the time Arethusa appears through the trees, you have already been photographing for an hour, and the height of the drop hits differently for it. May is the month. The snowmelt is still feeding the headwaters and the falls run with a volume that matches their scale. By August the water can thin to ribbons against the rock face, which is its own kind of photograph but not the one most people are after. Come in spring and come in the morning, when the basin is fully shaded and the long exposure becomes almost automatic. I rarely bother with an ND filter here. The forest does the work for me. The wide shot from the base is the obvious composition and it deserves to be made. But I find the more interesting frame is vertical, tight enough to lose the sky entirely, with a sense of the rock wall on either side compressing the water into a single white column. That is the photograph that gets at the height. The wide shot tells you Arethusa is tall. The vertical makes you feel it.

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