Multnomah Falls

Author's Comments

Six hundred and twenty feet is a number that does not mean much until you are standing at the base looking up, the spray on your face, the basalt rising into a kind of vertical forest that catches mist all the way down. Multnomah is the most photographed waterfall in Oregon and probably one of the most photographed in the country, and I understand the resistance some photographers feel toward places like this. I felt it too, for a while. Then I started arriving at six in the morning. The trick with Multnomah is volume - both of water and of people - and the two move in opposite directions through the day. Spring is when the falls run hardest, fed by snowmelt off the Cascades, and the lower basin fills with a fine drifting mist that turns the air silver in early light. The Benson Bridge sits between the two tiers like something out of a fairytale, and it is the obvious composition. Take it. Then keep working. The bridge is more interesting in long exposure when the water above and below it goes soft and the stone holds its edge against all that movement. In winter the falls sometimes freeze in sections and the cliffs go white and blue and strange. In autumn the bigleaf maples in the lower basin turn gold and the whole scene warms by several degrees of color temperature. There is no bad season here. There is only a bad hour, and that hour is mid-afternoon in July when the timed-use permits funnel everyone into the same small viewpoint at once. Come early. Let the falls be the falls. The photograph will find you.

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