Photographing waterfalls

Words by Mark Sunderland

Like many landscape photographers I have always been attracted to shooting moving water subjects, especially waterfalls. I love experimenting with shutter speeds to achieve the optimum amount of blur to convey the idea of the movement of the water in my still image while retaining sufficient detail.

But what constitutes an optimum amount of blur seems to be a matter of continuous and contentious debate among photographers. Some prefer shorter shutter speeds to produce a frozen ‘action’ image while others prefer longer shutter speeds to produce a softer, smoother effect.

There’s more on shutter speed selection later in this feature. I’ve always preferred the gentler effect of using longer shutter speeds, possibly because this seems somehow more abstract. And I like to experiment with producing abstract images. That’s not to say that stop-motion effect images are any more realistic – I think if I wanted to make a realistic image of a waterfall I’d make a film of it! But this is why there seems to be little agreement on what defines
the best shutter speed.

Put another way, there’s no such thing as the right or wrong shutter speed and experimentation is the key to achieving a result that you like. I generally find that trying shutter speeds anywhere from 1/8sec up to eight seconds can produce the blurred effect that I like. If I wanted to freeze the movement I would try 1/500sec or faster, as I find that a medium shutter speed produces an effect that is neither one thing nor the other.

My favourite falls is West Burton waterfalls in Wensleydale and it’s here where I pitched up last year. I arrived on a lovely still, autumn day with soft overcast lighting, ideal for shooting falls and foliage. Direct sunlight produces rather harsh, contrasty images that look horrible, so I quickly set up the tripod and got to work. The trees next to the waterfall were in full colour and there were plenty of fallen leaves lying on the rocks in the beck, so I tried horizontal and vertical compositions to make the most of these, setting the waterfall in its surroundings.

I was using a small lens aperture, f/22, to keep all this detail in sharp focus from front to back, which naturally gave shutter speeds of around a second under the lighting conditions, and resulted in a pleasing blur to the waterfall. As well as these shots I also spotted the attractive zigzag of a tiny cascade in the beck just at my feet while I was working.

It proves that pretty waterfalls don’t have to be huge – this one was about an inch high! I guess I’m lucky that the sort of lighting conditions I like for waterfalls tend to result in the sort of exposures that produce the results I want, so I don’t often have to force the issue with neutral density filters. These can be handy, though I try to travel light with my digital kit these days (carrying all that large format gear gave me backache!) and I often don’t have a filter kit with me.

Of course, with digital you can always change the ISO setting (within reason) and the EOS 5D I use has an extended ISO range down to ISO 50 which can be very useful for getting an extra-long exposure time. The only problem on this particular day was that it was not long after heavy rain, so my friendly little waterfall was more of a raging torrent. This can be dramatic, but can also result in less detail in the water, so I had to take care with metering the scene to ensure that the waterfall didn’t just become a huge white blob in my photograph.

With film I would generally use a spot meter to take a reading from the water. Soft lighting has made the most of West Burton waterfall. A Canon EOS 5D was set to ISO 100 allowing an exposure of 1.3sec at f/22 with a 24-105mm zoom. I do this less in the digital world, but it’s useful experience as waterfalls can be surprisingly bright compared with the rest of the scene even under very flat lighting, so even the best multi-segment metering system can be fooled.

Instead, I judge the scene by eye and use exposure compensation of -1/3 or -2/3 stops, say, and then check the histogram to ensure the highlights are OK. At least in the digital world I have the chance to check and correct the exposure. I was pretty happy with these ‘traditional’ waterfall shots of West Burton that day, but since moving from film to digital a whole new world of experimentation has opened up – often followed by deletion.

But it was by trial and error that I produced my swirling leaves image at Strid Wood in nearby Wharfedale. Here an eight-second exposure has blurred out all the detail in the moving water and just left the tracks that the fallen leaves made in the eddies, revealing a pattern normally hidden to the eye.

The trial and error part wasn’t so much the shutter speed, but more the timing of the exposure with the movement of the water to get a good effect, so I had to make a lot of exposures before I got a few good ones. Though I was pleased with swirling leaves, it was still produced in the traditional way of capturing movement, in that the camera was on a firm tripod so that the still parts of the image were sharp. This is fine, but it left me feeling that I wanted to make something even more abstract.

KIT BAG

If you enjoy landscape photography, the polarizing filter is an accessory worth its weight in gold. For flowing water, a polarizer absorbs almost two stops of light so it lets you set a much slower shutter speed than normal. It also cuts down any glare off the water’s surface. If you have several lenses with different size filter threads, buy a polarizer from Cokin or Lee and save cash by simply holding it in front of the lens, obviously taking great care not to cause any camera movement.

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