Diana's Baths

Author's Comments

The trick at Diana's Baths is the bedrock, not the water. Everyone arrives ready to photograph the cascades, and the cascades are fine, but the granite underneath is the actual subject - sculpted, scalloped, holding little pools that catch sky between the tiers. In spring the water runs hard enough to obscure most of that geometry. By late summer the flow has dropped and the rock comes forward, and that is when I find the place most interesting to photograph. Morning light is essential here. The falls sit in mixed forest and the canopy filters everything into a dappled mess once the sun gets high, which is unkind to long exposures. Before nine the light is even and the pools read as glass. Bring a polarizer. The wet granite throws glare that will flatten your detail shots otherwise, and the filter pulls the rock color back to that warm gray that feels like the White Mountains specifically and nowhere else. The wide shot from the lower tier is the obvious composition and worth making once. After that, work close. The water has carved the rock into shapes that hold up at any focal length, and a long lens on a single basin can give you something quieter than the postcard view. The trail is short and flat enough that you can carry more gear than you usually would. I would.

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