Fall in Virginia and around DC is very beautiful, but the window of opportunity to shoot autumn landscapes is very short. I’ve been trying to think about how best to take advantage of that window and so naturally I’ve turned to some of the locations that I’ve already shot. One of my favorite locations in the area is Great Falls, Virginia.

A couple of weeks ago, I got up early and drove out to the park to shoot the falls at sunrise. For the following photo, I stood on the railing of an overlook to get just the right angle. Notice the blurred waterfall and the kayakers.

Autumn sunrise at Great Falls I shot using a 16mm focal length (24mm equivalent on a traditional 32mm camera) using an aperture of f/11. The small aperture and the use of a circular polarizer allowed me to get a slow shutter speed of 1/6 second, which created the silky look of the falls.