Morgan Hill

• Ralph Waldo Emerson.

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Keeping with the woodlands there, today’s hot is from another woodland setting. Still from the west coast, but this time from Central California. After moving to California, this was one of the first trails we hiked. It didn’t disappoint, there were a bunch of amazing waterfalls at varying heights, and all of them provided exciting composition possibilities. The trail closely follows the Swanson creeks along the moss-covered Uvas Canyon.

This waterfall is known as the upper falls and is one of the tallest along the trail. The widest focal length at my disposal was 28mm, so I went downstream and framed the falls with the creek bed as the foreground interest.

A bit about equipment, I used a D7000 and an old Nikkor 18-70mm, which I bought off eBay for $65. I used to have the plastic Cokin filter system with a horrible magenta cast. Lees were so expensive me and often had months-long waitlists. Still, while processing the image, I couldn’t differentiate the shot from any that I have taken with D800 or D850 with my 70-200 or 24070 f2.8 pro lenses. Does this mean the expensive gear is a waste of money? No, it doesn’t. I had to be very careful with this equipment. The D7000 was a champ, but the 18-70 was a beaten piece of equipment, and I did not trust its focusing abilities, so manual focusing and taping the focus ring was the norm. The Cokin filters were a literal pain to use. There were countless instances were, its sharp edgest relieved my fingers off the skin. Plus, I had to be ever vigilant of light leaks because the cheap plastic got scratched up quickly and created horrible flares. The D850 and 24-70 f2.8 and breakthrough filters don’t worry me like my older setup. And that’s what expensive equipment gives you, peace of mind and a lesser chance of failure but it does not improve the quality of shots, your skillsets will do that. So don’t get discouraged if you are not using top of the line equipment, it’s the crappy equipment that will develop you as a better photographer.