This is South Falls at Silver Creek Falls State Park in Oregon. An awesome spectacle by any standards.

I've been pondering how to improve my work lately and I wanted to share some thoughts, musings and philosophies hoping to provoke some comments and ideas to further the conversation.

The conversation started with the inquiry as to how to powerfully engage a viewer? One of the aspects that would seem important is "Telling a Story" or conveying meaning. So that starts with an inquiry of what is going on here? What is special? Unique? Different? etc.
Then to think how to interpret that and the best way to express that.
So Here goes, some of my thought & creative process in coming up with this image.

BTW, one thing I have noticed is that in general we seem to struggle with stating the obvious! ;~)

Inquiry & Observations:
Its a really big waterfall (178 feet high!).
The trail behind it is amazing and perhaps VERY unique.
Its spring time and the leaves are budding.
To have a waterfall, well the cliff becomes an important feature.
There is a lot of water fowing over the falls.
Did I mention it's BIG?

Interpretation strategies and expressions:
Perhaps the best way to show height is to shoot from the lowest spot.
Including the trail that goes behind the falls is an important story to tell.
Scale is a bit mind boggling; include something to better gage size with, like the tree on the left.
Convey the sense of lots of water by including the river below the falls, so I stood on the bridge to get the best effect.
The light was hitting the new leaves so I played up that color and tweaked the contrast to show it off.
Play up the greens to express the wetness.
Blur the water slightly to express the thundering motion and energy, but not too much as then we lose the "veiling" and the falls don't look so big (only really big falls have that veiling pattern).

And so forth. This inquiry becomes more of a conceptual thinking process, but then does the result hold your interest longer?

Thoughts and comments encouraged!