Water in Motion

Water can be a challenging thing to photograph because it is rarely still. Today's photos are examples of a technique of photographing water that I find very attractive. This lovely silky effect of falling water is produced by long time exposures. The challenge comes from how to achieve long time exposures (4 seconds for these two photos) when there is lots of light. Under normal daylight conditions leaving the shutter open for 4 seconds would blur the waterfall beautifully but the photo would be badly overexposed. The solution is to cut down on the light using a filter over the lens. The filter designed for this purpose is called a neutral density filter. It blocks all visible wave lengths of light equally. Less light means the photographer can use a slower shutter speed or a time exposure. As is so often the case in life, however, a solution generates a different problem. Neutral density filters are hard to find and expensive. So how about today's photos - did I win the lottery? No, it turns out there is another solution. Many photographers will have a polarizing filter in their camera bag. These are readily available and relatively inexpensive filters generally used to cut glare and harsh reflections. The trick is to use two polarizing filters, one in front of the other. By rotating the front filter one can adjust how much light passes into the camera.(I didn't discover this myself but found it online in some forum or info page I've since lost. My thanks to the photographer who figured this out.) Hope you like these silky waterfalls since we will be seeing more of them from time to time. This particular waterfall was photographed yesterday in Goldstream Park, just outside Victoria.