If you look through my Galleries or Albums you will soon realise I rather like taking pictures of rivers, waterfalls, and the like. It’s obviously a throwback to my days as a fluvial geomorphologist and hydrologist. I think I’ve just about got the “silky” water effect cracked now, although when you’re short of light to start with, it can be a bit of a problem.
[How do I do it? Select Aperture Priority mode > choose a small aperture setting (say f22) > this decreases the shutter speed and gives a greater depth of field allowing everything from the lichen bush in the foreground to the hillside in the background (and everything in between) to be in focus.]
However, I did begin to think on this trip that I should experiment a bit more with trying to freeze-frame the water occasionally, to see what the result might look like. That would of course mean using a wide aperture setting in Aperture Priority mode, which would increase the shutter speed at the expense of narrowing the depth of field – thus nothing too close to the camera as it would be out of focus. In fact you can see in the shot below that the hillside is not as sharp as it was in the two previous shots – a casualty of shooting more wide open.
This shot has also had a bit of Lightroom post-processing applied to it. The de-haze filter, recently introduced, is magic! You get blue-sky where you hadn’t seen it before.
I’m glad I took these shots of the river in real-time motion. It makes a change for me, and I really like them as much, if not more than the silky effect ones. What do you think? However, remember, it’s all about depth of field as well, so your composition is important.
Finally, above and below, looking close in rather than big picture. The image above has been cropped quite a bit. I suspect you’ll be able to spot where it is in the shot below, taken above the waterfall.
