Shooting Rifle Falls last weekend was a great opportunity for me to experiment with water, motion and shutter speeds. I packed away my polarizers to soften the glare of the shiny water and neutral density filters to add depth to the blue skies. Well, at least my intentions were in the right place. I completely forgot that all of filters were bought to fit my older smaller lenses, not my new 16-35 or my 70-200. All kind of curse words! So that meant I was going to have to rely only on shooting in the shadows, a small aperture and large f-stop to stop down the camera enough to capture those tale-tell cottony streams of long-exposed water.
I was able to hand hold this shot at 1/60th of a second. The faster shutter speed freezes the waterfall.
At 1/13th of a second, the waterfall is in between worlds of being visibly slowed down, but still showing movement. At this point, you would have to have a steady grip to hand-hold this without camera shake.
A tripod is a must trying to capture this image at f/22 and 3.2 seconds. I tend to favor the slower exposure because I love the dreamy, almost otherworldly feel of the water. Which shot works for you?
