Take Me To the River

Yesterday, David and I (along with our dog) spent the day hiking around a couple of the state parks in our area. We were thrilled to discover Cataract Falls, which neither of us had been to before. Cataract was the site of an old mill and covered bridge. The mill no longer exists, although the foundation of the building is there, along with the space carved in the rock where the mill wheel once turned. The covered bridge, which was built in 1876, still stands and is in fabulous shape!

What is so exciting about going to the site of where a mill once stood? Waterfalls! I love shooting waterfalls because I like to get the opportunity to show motion. There is a LOT of motion at a waterfall and everyone seems to love those shots with water streaming along. But how do you get them? There are two keys to achieving these kinds of shots: exposure time and being motionless.

Exposure Time
Once again, we're going to delve into the manual settings on the camera for this type of shot. You don't need any special lenses for this. Your standard "kit" lens will work great. What you do need is a camera in which you can adjust the exposure. On a Canon camera, this is the Tv mode, where Tv stands for Time Value. The number being shown is actually a fraction of a second, so if you're in Tv mode and it says 500, your shutter will only be open for 1/500ths of a second. Therefore, the larger that Tv number is, the shorter the exposure time will be. Of course, just the opposite is true: the smaller the Tv number, the longer the exposure time. I find that to get shots that show the motion of water over a waterfall (a very fluid look), that setting my Tv to 10 (or 1/10th of a second) will achieve this look. However, you have to be careful about hand-held motion.

Being Motionless
Most of the time when we think we're holding our cameras still, we really aren't. No where is this more noticable than when you slow down the shutter speed. And really, unless you're going for something artsy fartsy, for a waterfall shot, or a river current shot, you really want everything that is stationary in the image to be in crisp focus. So what can you do? I recommend taking a small tripod with you. This is the best way to keep your camera stationary during longer exposure times. They aren't very expensive (especially on eBay) and are a good investment for a photographer. What else can you do? While I do not recommend this, I have been known to use the natural environment as my tripod. In the pix below, I set my camera on the rocks or ground in order to stabilize it. Again, I don't recommend this because if you're not careful, your camera could end up in the river, or getting stepped on, etc. You have been warned!

As with most of my advice on learning about different setting for your camera, the best thing to do is go out and practice. Find a scenic view you like, take 10 pictures of it with different settings on each shot. If you're shooting digital, all of the setting information will be available to you when you look at your photos on the computer. Then, you'll be able to determine which settings you prefer based on your own results.

Finally, here are a few examples from the weekend. They are available as stock photography by clicking here.

The below images were shot at the following settings:

Camera: Canon 20D
Aperture: f/22 - Shutter Speed: 1/10 - ISO: 100

Camera: Canon 20D
Aperture: f/32 - Shutter Speed: 1/10 - ISO: 100