This is a lovely little gem of a waterfall on a creek a few miles north of Caherdaniel. I’m almost reluctant to post this picture because the colors are so vivid it looks like it’s a Disney cartoon or something. But it’s not a Photoshop hack job. As you all know, this is not because I’m above such crude trickery. It just wasn’t necessary. This is what it looked like almost straight out of the camera.

“Almost” because these pictures are really hard to take in daylight. To get the velvety water effect, you need an exposure time of about eight seconds. This lets so much light into the camera that it’s nearly impossible to expose properly. Even with my smallest f-stop, lowest ISO setting, and a 64x neutral density filter, it was still overexposed. So I had to go into Photoshop to correct that. But that was all.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

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