Letchworth in Winter

Ice on middle falls.

Having to return our son, Doug, to school at SUNY Geneseo on Saturday morning we decided to make a day of it and use that opportunity to take a trip to Letchworth State Park and photograph the icy waterfalls for this week's blog posting.  When we left the house to head south the skies were blue and the sun was bright but by the time we dropped him off at the university and continued the additional 30 minutes south to the southern entrance of the park the clouds had started to roll in.

Close-up view of ice on middle falls.

This is both a good thing and a bad thing.  Handling the harsh contrast of bright sun and deep shadows is a difficult challenge but having blue skies and a brightly lit scene is also nice.  As it turns out we had moments of both as there continued to be breaks in the clouds while we walked around the upper and middle falls area of the park.  As is often the case when posting here I had a challenge picking the shot to emphasize as the photo of the week.  The shot I chose is a four image panoramic stitch taken with my 24 mm lens in the portrait orientation.

Observation point for upper falls.

This was the only way I could get the entire width of the falls in a single image.  The next two images posted here were strong candidates for top billing.  They are both slightly different views of the ice covered horseshoe shaped gorge wall just to the right of the falls in the top photo.  If you think one of those would have been a better choice, I would welcome your comments as to what you like about them.

Trail near upper falls.

Fountain at Glen Iris Inn

After taking these shots at the middle falls, we walked along the snow covered riverside trail to the falls that cascade below the iconic rail road bridge over the gorge.  The sun was shinning more here than when we were at the middle falls and helped back light the mist coming off the falls.  Although the day was only in the mid teens, the temperature slowly climbed throughout the early afternoon and by the time we hiked back to middle falls and back up to the parking lot of the Glen Iris Inn the temps were in the low to mid 20's.

Looking down river from middle falls.

As we were about to end our excursion and return to the car we noticed that fountain outside the inn was still operating and had produced a large mound of ice and made for an interesting subject to photograph.