WATCH: Video 'Winter in Great Falls'

Patch reader Riley Hanlon sent us this video of Great Falls in winter for Patch readers to enjoy.

He spent a cold, rainy, foggy day out at Great Falls National Park capturing the convergence of big moving water and frozen solid ice.

Here’s a behind-the-scenes account from Hanlon of how he shot the video:

“Shooting was definitely cold and wet. My wife (an interpreter at Leesylvania State Park) came along to hang out and help. We tried to bring the smallest rig possible because you have to hike in a bit down the C&O.

The path was covered in slush and mud. We forgot the big golf umbrella we wanted to bring, and had to use this little pink umbrella that was in her car to cover everything. We shot everything from out on Olmsted Island (Maryland side).

The camera had to be hooked up to an external recorder to get the slow motion stuff we wanted, so we had a camera, cables and a monitor, all held under the umbrella. Every time we had to move we just had to shuffle along as it was very awkward to keep all of that together and under the umbrella. But it worked!

We wanted to get some more bird shots, but I guess it was too cold for them to come out and play. We spent about 10 minutes waiting to get that one that was in the video. It made us really appreciate those National Geographic people who spend weeks in the woods waiting for birds: You wait a couple of minutes, they fly in, land, and before you can get a shot they fly off again!

Once our hands were numb (the combination of metal equipment and the fact that the recorder was a touch screen-so I had to keep gloves off!) we figured it was time to head out. Left from the park and went straight to Fedex (with the computer set up in the car so we could download the footage) to get the rental returned in time! Overall we were only there for probably 2 or 3 hours. With the slow motion footage, every second of recording is 10 seconds of playback, so I would only record a couple of seconds at a time.

The files are also huge (about 1GB per second), and knowing that I would have to download everything in the car I tried to not get too trigger happy! Almost everything was shot with a 100-400mm lens so we could get close ups of all of the rapids from the viewing decks. We ended up with an hour of footage.

After I finished the project I had originally rented the camera for, I had some spare time so I threw this together and thought the next snow day would be a good time to share! I love hanging out at Great Falls in all seasons, but there is just something eerily beautiful about all of the bare trees sticking through the fog, and those huge rapids next to the frozen banks.

I think as long as you’re warm, it’s a great place to be on a cold day. I just wanted to share that experience with people who might not know what is right in their backyard.”

Hanlon is a freelance director/cinematographer and lives in Woodbridge. He has been running his own production company for the past couple of years, and after graduating from JMU last year he has been working at his business full time. He does lots of different kinds of video work, but his main passion is working in the category of documentaries and outdoors/athletics.

Music accompanies the video, so turn down your sound (if you need to) before hitting the play button.

Thanks Riley!

See more of his work on his Web site: www.rileyhanlon.com

Music: “The Safety of the Sleepy Moonlight” by Those Who Ride With Giants
Licensed through The Music Bed
Sony FS700 + Odyssey 7q, 2k 240fps raw.

Winter in Great Falls from Riley Hanlon on Vimeo.