Les Cascades de Chiloza
(Waterfalls of Chiloza)
by Kristel Schneider

Nearby Besse, a French village in Auvergne  you can find a great area with many waterfalls and water basins. They come together, one after the other, within 1 km along the Pavin river. The waterfalls are quite different from each other and the forest shows a wide variety of trees, especially beeches.
It was the 3rd time I  visited this place and every time it looked different. The 1st time was in 2011 (see earlier post) and last week I went back there twice.

During my first visit I wanted to see the effect the autumn colors had on the scene. I also wanted to look for other possible compositions. I was not totally satisfied with the color and light conditions, so I went back two days later with my friend (photographer Sebastien Lamadon). The night before we had had heavy rainfalls and I could immediately see the impact the rain had made: the scene looked amazingly different from the one I had seen a couple of days earlier. The Autumn colors had not changed, contrary to  the light and color contrasts,  due to wet weather .

Image of the 2nd visit

Image of after the rain

The rough water conditions were challenging but it was a great morning,  rainy and overcast – ideal to photograph a forest scenery. Seb and I walked all the way down to the bottom of the river, and up again….looking for nice angles. Unfortunately, and despite the nice weather conditions, the water was too rough at some place, thus impossible to capture in the way I had imagined. After uploading my memory card at home,  I finally decided not to keep a lot of images. But, nevertheless, the walk had given me extra new ideas to work on some other time, with hopefully just the right amount of water 😉

Click here for my latest image.