Hiji Creek

This was taken a little way down from Hiji Falls where the water was running to. The Hiji Falls area is located in the Northern Yambaru area of Okinawa where there is a very low population and a dense amount of forestry. There is another picture from this visit of the actual falls but this shot I found to be just as charming if not more so. The thick vegetation was exploding with color on this visit and the calm crystal clear water made for an interesting subject for the photo. From the photo it looks like I’m actually standing in the water but in reality there was a little path of rocks that went across a miniature waterfall that I was standing on to get this shot. This place was bit of a pain to get to because we had to take a bus here and if you have ever been to Okinawa you would come to find out that they don’t speak much English and everything is in Japanese characters. Fortunately I had been going over the Japanese Rosetta Stone at the time so I knew a bit of conversational Japanese that helped us out getting here. This was also the second time we came here because on our first trip it was closed by the time we arrived. I liked this area in particular because everything was shrouded in shade giving the whole scene a nice soft light and the whole area felt so full of life. For this image I mounted my camera on a tripod and shot three exposures in order to get the full range of light in the scene. I took those three exposures and attempted an HDR image but quickly realized it was better off as a regular RAW. So instead I used the other exposure to help fill in some shadows and blown out areas.