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Water Falls. So how do you catch it?

Shooting waterfalls, rapids, and other moving water.

You’re hiking in the woods or driving around a scenic area and you see a beautiful waterfall that is just crying out to be photographed. What’s the best way? The first thing is to think about the character of the fall and how you want to portray it. Is it a torrent full of energy crashing down on boulders, or is it a stream spilling into a peaceful pool? Do you want to concentrate on just the water or back off and include more of the surroundings? Places, like people, have character. Your image should reflect it. When I saw the waterfall in the image at right, made in the forest of Suriname, I realized right away that it called for a bit of the environment and a slow shutter speed. The verdant plants on the cliff begged to be included, and the stream spilling into the pool created a milky foam on the surface. A slow shutter speed would accentuate the foam by making it even milkier. A slow shutter speed would also allow me to close down the aperture to get greater depth of field so both the foam in the foreground and the fall in the background would be sharp. (For more about depth of field, see the “Sharp or Fuzzy” Tips Flick and Actual Info.) Unfortunately, I didn’t have a tripod with me (because I hate carrying stuff around). So I put my camera bag on a rock, nestled my camera into the top of it, and was able to use a slow shutter speed without any camera movement.

In the picture at left (of the Blue Nile Falls in Ethiopia), I wanted to show even more of the environment to give the falls more context. So I hiked away from the falls until I found what I thought was an interesting foreground and used some trees to frame them (and to break up the white sky). Here I used a normal shutter speed (125th of a second) because the motion of the water didn’t really matter.

Shooting waterfalls and rapids is basically a kind of motion photography—using freeze or blur to get the effect you want. (For more detail about motion, see the “Photogs ‘n Motion” Tips Flick and Actual Info.) Here are images of the same falls taken with fast and slow shutter speeds. You can see how different they feel.

Of course, if you have people moving in the frame (or wind blowing the vegetation), you can’t really use a slow shutter speed—they would get all blurry. In the picture at left, the fast shutter speed works perfectly to capture both the action of the line of people dancing across the falls and the power of the water crashing onto the rocks. In the picture at right, I had to use a fast enough shutter speed to freeze the man in the foreground.

And if you are shooting aerials of waterfalls, you have to use a fast shutter speed because you and the plane or helicopter are moving and vibrating.

You may find other kinds of falling water you want to photograph too. Most often, they will require a faster than normal shutter speed to freeze the activity, whether it’s a little water or a lot—like the two images below:

And if the water you are photographing is clear and fairly shallow, think about how you want it and what’s beneath it to appear. Do you want the water to be sparkly and clear, the bottom crisp? Or do you want the water to be more translucent, the bottom softer and more mysterious?

So remember: When you are shooting waterfalls, rapids, or other moving water, how do you want it to appear? Is context important, and if so, how much? Is there something in the frame that dictates a fast shutter speed? Do you want to freeze the water or have it be milky? Do you want to see through the water or pay more attention to the surface? If you spend time looking at and thinking about your subject, it will tell you what it calls for. And remember that the shutter speed you use will impact the amount of depth of field, so make sure you have as much or as little as you want.

One more piece of advice: Don’t leave the shutter open TOO long or all the water might disappear.

All Actual Info and Tips Filx