I shoot at the Minnehaha falls area a decent amount — having a nice mile of woodland creek trail from the falls all the way down to the Mississippi river right in the heart of Minneapolis is just too good to avoid. My father, however, had never been and wanted to check it out. So this week we met up and went down to the park in hopes of catching some shots before all of the leaves were gone.

Alas, we were too late. Even the oaks had shed every last leaf, and the leaves on the ground had browned, dried up, and blown away. It was a bleak landscape of browns and grays. To make matters worse the day we went on was cloudless and sunny, crummy photography weather.

One of the tricky things about photographing at Minnehaha is that the creek runs along a deep ravine. So if you go at traditionally good photographic hours — sunrise and sunset, everything along the creek is lost in shadow. The best bet is those magical slightly overcast but still bright days, and this was not one.

We wandered perhaps halfway to the river before giving up and turning back. I spent a lot more time than usual desperately looking for shots — I can’t stand going on a trip and not even trying.

3 sec at f25 on ISO 200 with 32mm focal length using a NDx6 filter

Finally I went with the old standby and spent a chunk of time trying to get a shot of the creek water flowing underneath one of the stone footbridges. Fortunately the creek level was very high — especially for so late in the year — and the water was really flowing. I was perched on some rocks with the tripod in the water, trying to get a shot of just the water in the slight shadows there were, since the difference from bright sun to shadow was too high of a range to capture.

The speed of the creek really lent a surreal quality to the water with the long exposure. I left happy to avoid being entirely skunked for the trip.