Day 142 - Higher than Niagara and just as dramatic

La Chute Montmorency, located just east of Quebec City along the north shore of the St. Lawrence River, is a water fall that dwarfs Niagara Falls in height and challenges it in splendour.

We visited the beautifully designed park that contains this natural wonder this morning and found the falls thundering at their mightiest, thanks to the high water levels this spring. The park allows you to get close to the falls at both the top and bottom of the cliff, meaning you can get soaked if you want while enjoying plenty of great views. I got a lot of great shots, including this one from a lookout at the top.

The challenge for me as a photographer, of course, involved not just getting the silly autofocus mechanism to find the rushing water but also to get the proper amount of light in the shot, since the light meter under-reads the light reflected by the water. If you go by the meter, the crashing water will be overexposed, without detail. I find you have to deliberately set the camera to allow in less light so that you see the individual ripples and water drops.

It's not so hard to do, however, since you want to push your shutter speed as high as possible (in this case, 1/1000th of a second) to freeze the action. The higher the shutter speed, the less light gets in. Problem solved and photograph improved.