Tag Archives: Waterfall

Shooting waterfalls and moving water… great for Autumn

Moving water shots

Moving water shots are some of the most romantic landscape shots. They are really easy and fun to do. (Image from the video).

Wow! September already…

With Autumn around the corner I am thinking about great projects for the when the leaves start to turn. Here’s a great idea for you to follow up to make the best of the Autumn colours.

Why Autumn

The summer is great for doing wide open landscapes. Especially around the Golden Hour or at dawn when the light has those wonderful reds, golden or yellow colours.

Autumn is better for doing great shots under the forest canopy and those great shadowy dell shots. The Sun’s lower in the sky and there is reduced contrast with fewer distracting bright spots peeping through the trees from the sky. The light is great and the lower aspect is better for creating contrasts in moving and falling water. On top of that the autumnal colours are exciting. More to the point the range of Autumnal colours create depth and contrast. That is something that uniform green of the summer months tends to reduce.

So think about doing your waterfall and forest shots in the next two months or for your local Autumn. You will really benefit from greater contrasts, colours and light angles.

How to blur water for a dreamy effect

To get you started on great water shots here is an introductory video on the way to slightly blur water in your shots. It helps to make the water take on a more motion-filled ethereal dreaminess.
Uploaded by: Gordon Laing (28 Dec 2007)

A couple of extra tips

Sometimes, especially when working under trees with those hidden waterfalls you will get large contrasts with the surrounding environment. Such contrasts often cause highlights that are distracting. Here are a couple of extra tips to help get past this distraction…

  • If you find you are doing a shadowy moving water shot in the trees but the brightness is still too high try using a polariser filter. This will help to increase the contrasts and overall reduce the incoming light. Polarisers reduce the light by up to about two stops which really helps when working with water. It will also reduce sharp reflections which can be confusing in moving water – especially under trees.
  • If you need to reduce the light even more you can try a Neutral Density filter (ND filter) This type of filter is like sunglasses for your camera. You can find out more here… and here is a range of resources on filters.

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By Damon Guy (author and Photokonnexion editor)

Damon Guy - Netkonnexion

Damon Guy (Netkonnexion)

Damon is a writer-photog and editor of this site. He has run some major websites, a computing department and a digital image library. He started out as a trained teacher and now runs training for digital photographers.
See also: Editors ‘Bio’.

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