Rock Archives | Scott Prokop Photography

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May 27, 2013 / Leave a Comment

Grotto Falls

The Great Smoky Mountains National Park has many great waterfalls that are worth the hike. Grotto Falls is a 3 mile hike round trip through the hemlock forest and has a path underneath the falls to get a different perspective of the area. The 25 foot waterfall offers a diverse collection of photos to take.

Tight Middle Wide

Tight, middle, wide are the type of shots I try to take. The feature image shows a wide shot of the falls and the entire pool around the area and the image below shows just the falls. I shot this early in the morning before the tourists arrived because this is a popular spot. I used a 10mm Fisheye lens to capture about 170 degrees of the falls and pool without needing to stitch a pile of images.

24mm, f/16, ISO 100, 2 sec

For the middle shot, I concentrated just on the falls. For the tight shot, look for the details and try to just shoot them. I went behind the falls to concentrate just on the water flowing over the edge. To get the nice flow of the water, be sure to use a tripod and set your exposure time to 1 sec or more.

24mm, f/11, ISO 100, 6 sec

Purchase the middle image from my online “Nature” print gallery.

Gear Used:

Camera: Canon EOS 60D DSLR Camera
Tight & Middle Lens: Canon 24-105mm f/4L IS EF USM AF Lens
Wide Lens: Sigma 10mm f/2.8 EX DC HSM Fisheye Lens for Canon Digital Camera
Tripod: Oben CT-3400 4-Section Carbon Fiber Folding Tripod w/ BB-0T Ball Head

January 20, 2013 / Leave a Comment

Fire Wave

The Fire Wave is located at the Valley of Fire State Park, Nevada. I traveled to this park a couple of times in the past and had no idea that this geological feature was hiding in the park. The Wave has become quite popular due to the fact that the park has now included the photo on their brochure and also created a marked trail to the location. It’s an easy half mile hike into the location and the best light is at the end of the day towards sunset.

If you are in Las Vegas, I would recommend taking a day trip to this park. It is only 1 hour North on Interstate 15 and follow the signs for the road to The Valley of Fire.

View The Fire Wave in a larger map

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January 10, 2013 / 1 Comment

Grand Canyon Glow

The golden hour at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. I recently took one of the helicopter tours from Las Vegas to the bottom of the Grand Canyon on Papillon’s Sunset Tour and the images that I got were impressive. We landed near the Colorado river as the sun was setting and the glow off the canyon walls were quite breathtaking.

I shot this with a 5 image exposure (-2, -1, even, +1, +2) and processed the HDR image using HDR Efex Pro 2. Further enhancements were made using onOne’s Perfect Effects to enhance the details and bring out the colors in the plants.

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July 15, 2012 / Leave a Comment

Water Flow

Water flowing on Laurel Creek in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee. This is a 3 exposure image (-2,0,+2) that was tripod mounted with a 2 stop neutral density filter (to slow down the action to capture the water flow) and processed in the new Nik HDR Efex Pro 2. The new version of the software is quick and allows me to see the thumbnails of the various effects to get the exact final image that I envisioned. I wanted something colorful and partially abstract.

You can save 15% when you order any Nik Software product by using this code: ScottProkop

July 1, 2012 / Leave a Comment

Mono Lake

Mono Lake is located in California’s spectacular Eastern Sierra and features large tufas on the shores.

10mm Fisheye Lens used to capture the scene

By diverting water that flows into the lake to Los Angeles, this caused the lake’s level to fall, exposing once submerged tufa towers. These spectacular features are formed from a rough, thick, rock-like calcium carbonate deposit that precipitates from calcium-bearing spring water in an alkaline lake rich in carbonates.