Blackwater Falls - Inca Summer Fantasy

Support me on Patreon

---

Long exposure photo of Blackwater Falls and winding wood staircase from Blackwater Falls State Park near Davis, West Virginia (USA). HDR composite from multiple exposures, and variant of Blackwater Falls III processed with a vibrant mix of colors for a more surreal atmosphere.

Offered under a Creative Commons license / Attribution Unported. Meaning Yes for commercial use including premade backgrounds as long as you credit and link back to me. More details on my stock rules here: somadjinn.deviantart.com/journ…

For a small premium of 50 points you can download this stock at a high resolution of 5000 x 3333 px. Also available for purchase as a print.

---

Now included for download on my Patreon account if you want access to an ever-growing collection of my high res stock for one monthly subscription fee.

You can find this specific image at the following post: www.patreon.com/posts/winding-…

---

For curious minds wondering about what I like to call the Inca Summer color effect, it was inspired by a vivid dream...

There I was sitting on the porch of a remote cabin just shooting the breeze with my now late father and soaking in the pristine scenery. All of a sudden the surrounding leaves and foliage took a life of their own with ever-changing splashes of colors like a glowing prism as far as the eye could see. 

Completely stumped for words but incredibly amazed, I turned to my father who offered me a warm smile and said:
“Son, that’s what we call Inca Summer. A bit like Indian Summer, but infused with vibrantly mystical properties. Fortune must be cheering in our favour as this type of phenomenon happens by pure chance only once every few generations in completely random places around the world. No one knows for sure how or why it works as it has seldom ever been documented, but it is fabled to be the vestiges of ancient Inca magic performed right before the autumn equinox for Mother Nature to protect the Earth and its people against the hard times ahead.” 

Still in this dream my instinct was to desperately reach for my camera which I had of course misplaced. And by the time I found it, mounted on the tripod and adjusted the photo settings, the Inca Summer had just as quickly disappeared lol. Great, there goes my shot at capturing the perfect moment! But I woke up determined at least in trying to recreate the effect I had imagined in the dream.

As such Inca Summer doesn’t relate to a specific location or historical context, but rather an experimental effect in creating surreal color variations. Color variations applied selectively to elements of vegetation like the tree foliage in this image.