Waterfalls and lighting on bright days

[Archbob]

So, I've been messing with this for a long time. I took a picture of a small waterfall on a bright day around noon. To get that silky smooth flow of water, you have to turn the ISO low, the F-stop high and the shutter speed to slow. But unfortunately, it still makes the water look really bright. I played around with shadow/highlights as well as contrast and curves and could get something like this.


While it looks ok, I can't really get that coloration, lighting and look where its a smooth waterfall and not that bright even if taken on a clear day with clear skies. Any tips?

 

[Tom Mann]

a) the only way to tell if one can do better than you've already done is if u also post the original, straight out of the camera file.

b) if you had captured this on a raw file, this would be trivial to rescue. Typically, raw files easily give u an extra stop of headroom.

c) in the future, keep an ND filter in your camera bag. All waterfall photogs use them. It should be at least 3 stops.

Tom M