A friend who knows I love the outdoors and photography suggested I visit the Kugler Woods Waterfall in Stockton, New Jersey. I found excellent information on The Outbound website. The waterfall is tiny, but I got some fantastic long-exposure shots on my iPhone 6 (using the Pro Cam app) and Nikon DSLR. I think the flow of water is dependent on the amount of rainfall. I will visit again when the spring rains start.
The best light is most likely the blue hour at the end of the day. I don't know this for sure, but given that the waterfall faces west, the late evening light will illuminate the water.
Getting close to the water with the lens was challenging. The rocks were slippery from the moisture, which in this case was ice. Did I mention it was cold?
I struggled with the long exposure. I used my AF-S DX Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G lens for all the images. Because the lens focus ring only works in manual mode, I focused with the lens in auto-mode, locked in the exposure readings, switched the lens to manual, and then carefully attached a ten-stop Hoya Pro 52mm 1000x Neutral Density Filter. I had to do this for every capture. I'm saving up either the Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 AT-X116 Pro DX II Digital Zoom Lens or the Sigma 8-16mm f/4.5-5.6 DC HSM FLD AF Ultra-Wide Zoom Lens. I haven't decided which lens to buy. From what I read on Lensrentals, the Tokina has better image quality than the Sigma. But the Sigma is wider.
I started with 30 seconds, but I think 60 seconds worked best for the time of day. I tried doing some long-exposure HDR as well. The images here are all HDR images with exposure times between 2 and 30 seconds. The exposures were combined in Photomatix Pro 5.
