Alex Wise Photography

I con­tin­u­ally come across pho­tographs of water­falls and they seem to lack some­thing. I won­der if the owner just doesn’t under­stand what their cam­era is capa­ble of or they just don’t care. But any­way I wanted to note what nat­ural resources I rely on (such as weather) but also the tech­ni­cal aspects such as shut­ter speeds. I just find it amaz­ing that peo­ple come across water­falls with such poten­tial and if they just took their time for a extra minute then I think the shot would be of much higher stan­dard. Any­how here are a few begin­ners pho­tog­ra­phy tips which might help.

When shoot­ing land­scape pho­tog­ra­phy, not only does the loca­tion play a impor­tant fac­tor but the weather and time of the scene must also be taken into account. For water­fall pho­tog­ra­phy, I find the weather to be a very impor­tant fac­tor, this comes as it can ensure that the expo­sure is good which con­tributes to the final shot.

My favourite weather for shoot­ing water­falls is a over­cast sky with patchy show­ers. The rea­son behind this comes as a result of the high­lights which a clear sunny day may cre­ate when shoot­ing. As you will be aware, most water­falls have many sur­round­ing trees which with a sunny sky can con­tribute to high­light around the scene. This in turn means that when attempt­ing to take your shot, the end result will have patchy bright areas around the scene which aren’t exactly appeal­ing. Also, when the weather is sunny and there is more light avail­able this means that it’s dif­fi­cult to use slower expo­sures to cre­ate move­ment in the water. So if you have the option and can be selec­tive with when you are plan­ning to shoot a pop­u­lar water­fall, hold back for a over­cast day. Here are a cou­ple of exam­ples of what I’m get­ting at and you can decide your­self which looks better..

Thanks Flickr

Another impor­tant part of shoot­ing a water­fall is the expo­sure time. When shoot­ing water­scapes at the beach I’m care­ful not to some­times shoot expo­sures that are above 3–5 sec­onds. This is because an expo­sure of 20 sec­onds cre­ates a com­pletely dif­fer­ent image which a 3″ sec­ond expo­sure may cre­ate. For water­falls this isn’t as much the case and the only thing which puts me off a long expo­sure is that trees may move dur­ing the expo­sure and cre­ate a blur. This is usu­ally fine if they aren’t even at the view­ers atten­tion but are some­thing just to take into account because although the long expo­sure is good for the water to cre­ate an effect, you must care­fully man­age your other areas of the scene. I increas­ingly come across peo­ple who take pic­tures of water­falls and just use a high shut­ter speed. This is fine and that’s your deci­sion but I find adjust­ing the shut­ter so it’s rel­a­tively slow (say 0.3″ sec­onds) can make quite the dif­fer­ence. Obvi­ously this requires a tri­pod but is well worth the extra weight you may have to carry in.

Thanks again flickr

So just in a nut­shell for any­one start­ing out doing long expo­sures, set the cam­era into a shut­ter pri­or­ity mode and set the speed to around 0.3″+ sec­onds and slowly play with it until you end up with a image your happy with. Ini­tially you might be faced with an over exposed (bright image) which may mean you will have to fas­ten the shut­ter up a bit. If you just can’t get the shut­ter slow enough to cre­ate a blur in the water then I rec­om­mend neu­tral den­sity filters.

In terms of com­pos­ite of water­falls, that’s some­thing which you can’t really teach some­one as we all have our own way of tak­ing a pho­to­graph. Per­son­ally I like to frame the shot so there is some­thing in the fore­ground such as rocks and then have the water­fall in the back­ground. This is good as it not only cre­ates a bit more inter­est to the viewer but also forms a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive to the aver­age post card image.

Hope that helps with your future endeav­ours. I’m by no means a expert at pho­tog­ra­phy but these things are so sim­ple, abide by them and you will be rewarded.