A few years ago, I decided to return to West Virginia with a good friend to photograph some of my favorite waterfalls in the spring. I had photographed the region a few times in the past and was eager to return. The weather cooperated beautifully over the course of the week with occasional overcast skies that created ideal conditions for waterfall photography.
Douglas Falls is located along Blackwater Canyon Trail, near the town of Thomas, West Virginia. The small town of Thomas is situated on the North Fork of the Blackwater River, within the Monongahela National Forest. The town was named after Thomas B. Davis, who founded Davis Coal and Coke, one of the world’s best-known coal companies, which employed approximately 1,600 people in several nearby coal mines from 1887 through the 1940s.
Douglas Falls drops 35 feet into the Blackwater River in an emerald-colored pool. The rocks surrounding the river are coloured in vivid hues of orange and red. However, these colors are not natural; the effect of iron oxide from the coke ovens upstream, draining into the North Fork off the Blackwater River, causes the permanent color stain we see today. Pretty but not natural.
I took the photo near a cascade just below Douglas Falls in May. Since my camera was positioned very close to the rocks, I took a “focus stack” (a short sequence of photos with different focus points) to ensure sharpness from close to far in the resulting image. I chose this composition because the shale rocks in the foreground formed appealing layers of texture.