As many of you already know from following my old blog (which is non-existent any longer
) I am quite a waterfall junkie! Even though I am a portrait and wedding photographer, I am usually found chasing waterfalls (breaking out in song here) during my free time. Many of you have asked me to help you to achieve that silky flow that I always try to capture when shooting flowing water. I have to pause for a moment and add that Donna Tomlin and Jeremy Holmes are the two people that actually taught me how to do this myself. Every since that first outing with the two of them at Machine Falls in Manchester, TN I have been hooked and trying to perfect my style. While I may be able to teach you the basics in this blog post and give you a few things to keep in mind when you are shooting waterfalls yourself, I have to say that actually getting out there and playing with your camera is the best way to learn. With that being said… let’s begin!
LIGHTING:
The first thing I will talk about here is light. It is very difficult to make a waterall shot look worth a flip if the sun is shining directly on the falls. Knowing your location and which direction the sun is going to rise or set is one way of helping your shot become great! So do your homework. As you can see from this shot, the sun shining directly on the waterfall made the water look like a big ugly overexposed mess!
If you are shooting in the early morning light and the waterfall is facing the east where the sun is rising, then you are wasting you time. But if you are shooting in an area that the sun will not touch for a while, then morning light will make your photos beautiful! If it is a cloudy overcast day, then you have hit the jackpot! Don’t be afraid of shooting waterfalls on a day that is calling for rain. Bring something to protect your camera just in case the bottom falls out of the sky, but get out there and take advantage of the daylight without direct sun. Cloudy days are a waterfall photographer’s best friend!
FLOW STRENGTH:
The next thing to consider when shooting waterfalls is how heavy or light the flow of water is falling. A lot of people prefer shooting waterfalls that have very little water falling from it because they are able to slow down their shutter speed enough to really get a beautiful silky flow without blowing out the water in the photo. Even in indirect sunlight, you can really ruin a waterfall shot that has a strong flow if you don’t know what you are doing. If you will look at the examples that I used in the above section, you will see a couple of different waterfalls that had very little flow compared to some. In this example, I will show you a shot of a waterfall that had a very strong flow. Even though my shutter speed wasn’t very slow, it still made the waterfall look blown out!
However… getting that perfect exposure on the water is DEFINATELY achievable even with heavy flowing waterfalls. Check this one out! Even though this waterfall had really heavy water flow, I was able to make the water silky and beautiful just by changing a few camera settings and changing my composition. Instead of shooting the waterfall head on, shooting from the side gave this shot a little more interestingness! (Is that a word?)
CAMERA SETTINGS FOR SHOOTING IN MANUAL MODE:
I probably should have talked about shutter speed first since I keep mentioning it throughout this tutorial. So let’s take a minute to discuss it. Slowing down your shutter speed on your camera is how you achieve that silky flow in a waterfall. Since most of you who have asked me to write this tutorial are not professional photographers, I will try to keep this simple. Understanding shutter speed isn’t difficult. Understanding aperture isn’t difficult. Understanding ISO isn’t difficult. But understanding how all three of them work together can get a little difficult.
ISO
So let’s start with ISO. KEEP YOUR ISO AS LOW AS POSSIBLE! Set your ISO to 100 and go from there. You can change it later if it doesn’t work. But for now, we want to start out with your ISO set to 100.
APERTURE
Next we want to set our aperture settings. There is no magic number for me to tell you to put your camera on. Your lighting and the amount of water flowing will determine what your aperture setting should be. But for grins and giggles, we are going to start with the number 18. Set your aperture to 18 and then we are going to change our shutter speed to whatever is necessary to make our meter read somewhere close to the middle.
SHUTTER SPEED
Once you have set your aperture to 18, you need to set your shutter speed to a number that will move your meter dial somewhere close to the middle of the meter. Now take a shot! Is the water blown out? Is the water too dark? Do you have that silky flow? If not, keep playing with your aperture number and readjust the shutter speed until the meter is in the middle. Note: Most of the time, your shutter speed will be anywhere between 1/4 of a second and 4 seconds.
EQUIPMENT NEEDED:
Sometimes we can’t get our shutter speed slow enough because there is so much light. One way to help reduce the amount of light entering your lens is to apply an ND Filter to your lens. When shooting waterfalls, it is almost a necessary tool! It is also necessary to ALWAYS have a tripod. You can’t hand hold your camera while shooting with slow shutter speeds, or you will end up with a big blurry mess. YOU MUST have a tripod. You also need to have a camera with a timer or possibly even a remote control. When you push the shutter button, you will make the camera vibrate which can also cause blur. Make sure that you use a remote or a timer so that your camera has enough time to stop vibrating before the actual shot is taken.
I hope that this tutorial helps, and thank you to those of you who have asked me to write this. I will say… telling someone how to shoot waterfalls is much harder than showing them. I’ve tried to keep this tutorial as simple as possible without assuming that everyone with a camera is professional. I am always up for waterfall shooting, so if you are the kind of person who learns better from doing instead of reading (like I am) then hit me up for a tag-along. I’m always out chasing a waterfall during my free time!
IF YOU HAVE QUESTIONS ABOUT SHOOTING WATERFALLS, PLEASE POST YOUR QUESTIONS IN THE COMMENTS! I WOULD LOVE TO ANSWER THEM FOR YOU!
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