It’s easy to get so zoomed in on the task at hand that we forget to pull over to the side of the road and take a break. I took this shot at the end of a very long day and almost didn’t bother with it.

Up at 4:45 a.m., I had driven 75 miles to meet with Jenny Hastings, my contact at, Adventure Ready Brands, in New Hampshire, for an all-day lifestyle shoot. Other than Thai food for lunch, we never stopped moving all day, and by the time 5:00 rolled around, I was exhausted and just wanted to go home and fall asleep in a chair.

But as I drove toward the turn to Upper Ammonoosic Falls, I knew there was no way I could just glide past on my way to my recliner. Ten minutes later I was standing on a boulder above the river looking upstream at this view.

Now, I don’t shoot a lot of waterfall images (it’s way harder than it looks), but this one was a no-brainer. The vantage point was awesome, the leading line of the water through the scene was perfect, and the fall foliage was at its peak. And so I set everything up, composed, fiddled with settings, and took this five-image stack. It won’t win any awards (it’s a rather blue-collar waterfall pic, actually), but it’s pleasing and I loved just being there. As an added bonus, it’s just as important what this shot isn’t as what it is. Just a few pools up from here is the “money shot” that you will see on all of the postcards. The drop is higher, the plunge-pool deeper, and there is even a cute little bridge across the river. And that’s exactly why I shot from here rather than from there. This could be essentially anywhere in The White Mountains, or nowhere, which is perfect. My own spot to just chill out for a while take a snapshot or two. Other than the rush and purl of the water over the stones, I heard nothing.