Chasing Waterfalls with Jacksonville Magazine


From Jacksonville Magazine: An hours drive from Jacksonville yields an unexpected oddity: Falling Creek Falls. The falls aren’t huge, plum­meting just ten feet over a lip of limestone and boulders at the bottom of a ravine. Falling Creek was the site of the first settlement in the area, and is easily accessible via an elevated boardwalk.  Photographer Tom Schifanella was drawn to the picturesque location by a roadside sign.  “After the summer after­noon thunderstorms, Falling Creek becomes a cascade of coffee colored water and foam,” he says. “Like a latte swirling in your cup, the falls churn the foam in a limestone saucer of eddies and whirlpools. The coffee color comes from the tannic acid of the decaying leaves lining the banks and swampy floor. I used a neutral density filter on the lens, which reduced the amount of light, and lengthened the exposure to eight seconds.  If a picture is indeed worth a thousand words, Schifanella’s photo­graphic vocabulary runs very deep. 

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