Ohiopyle State Park – Landscape Photography

Recently, I visited Ohiopyle State Park for the first time.  I was quite impressed with the quaint little town as well as the massive amount of people visiting the park.  I only had a couple of hours and had to work with the sporadic downpours that were happening when I was there.  I won’t complain though, the “bad” weather is the reason I decided to make the drive to Ohiopyle… Sunrises and sunsets are great but bad weather is the new sunset of photography in my opinion.

Cloud cover acts as a giant soft box that reduces the harshness of the light and reflections which is often ideal for photography (especially in the middle of the afternoon).  Leaves, wet rocks, and reflective surfaces will often distract viewers if captured in harsh afternoon light because of the bright highlights.  

DSC_7901-PanoThe shot above is a multi-level panoramic image taken with the Nikon D810 and the Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8G ED VR II .  You can’t really tell by looking at the image but it was taken in a downpour as I balanced an umbrella above the camera/lens and held my camera bag between my legs to keep it from getting drenched (I couldn’t get the rain cover out of the bottom of the bag and hold the umbrella over the camera as well.  I used a 6 stop ND filter to slow my shutter speed and make the water look almost like ice.  I included the visitor center because of the juxtaposition it has with the natural surroundings.

The photograph at the top of the page was taken from one of the overlooks that give a beautiful view of the valley.  The downpour had just stopped and as I was shaking off the previous rain I thought I’d head up to this overlook to see if there were any low clouds that usually follow a storm like this…  There were.

DSC_7934-PanoThis two level, multi-shot, panoramic image was taken with the Nikon D810 and the Nikon 16-35mm f/4G lens.  I attempted to expand on the image at the top of this article, I wanted to try to capture the vastness of the scenic view and a panoramic image seemed like the only good option.  I used 28mm as the focal length which is much wider than what I would normally recommend because of parallax.  Also not recommended, I took this shot hand-held.  Really, I am quite amazed that the image doesn’t look more distorted…  Kudos to Adobe for their impressive software.

Feel free to share your questions or thoughts in the comments section below.  Enjoy!

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