Details of waterfalls can be a challenge. Sunlight in waterfall details can be a nightmare. I went to shoot the falls before sunrise and then just when I thought I’d pack up, this started happening. I had to stay and see if I could manage the light and I think it works pretty well.
I exposed for the highlights and did my best to tame them, but this about the light and the water movement. Does it work?
Technical Details
Is this a composite: No
Olympus E-30
Zuiko D. 12-60mm lens @48mm
2 seconds @ f/10 & ISO 100
Tripod
Lr processed to finesse the light through the image with curves & local brush adjustments. Ps to remove a little leaf that I couldn’t reach to hold out of the way.
It definitely shows the movement of the water and, the angle carries my eye throughout the frame. I’m not sure how I feel about the one bright spot. It isn’t really distracting and, in fact, might be what pulls my eyes through the frame.
Thanks Terry - the brightest area is what I exposed for and I don’t think I clipped it badly, it’s just bright. Toning it down to meet the rest of the bright areas would look fake to me, so I just gave it some nuance, but left the context alone in terms of how much sun was hitting there v. other areas.
Am heading to the U.P. in a couple hours and I hope conditions are good for some waterfalls. We had torrential rain recently so they should be running well. Lots of excellent falls right before Superior.
I like the small, more intiment images and crops of falls, cascades, etc. They’re not the big, crashing, full on magnificence, but pieces that make up the whole. The two second exposure is a little long for my tastes, but that’s a purely subjective opinion. Shorter exposures have more texture and less flow - if that makes sense. Nit picking aside, this is a lovely, comforting small scene.
Thanks, Paul. I do a ton of waterfalls, bur always try for something more intimate.
This was before I’d experimented much and on the whole, I agree about shorter (<1 second) exposures. Sometimes I like them longer when I’m contrasting with something very crunchy like ice or jagged rocks, but a lot of times the water itself is the star of the show. I’m hopefully going to get to some cool falls here in the UP on Thursday (clouds and drizzle willing!).
I keep coming back to this image. About how tall is the drop in the center? I really like the longer exposure and separated streaming on the left side of the ledge where the rock edge is serrated. It’s the larger masses along the bottom, to the lower left corner, and the central right I would prefer more substance. My opinion of course.
I wonder if it would be possible to make several images at different shutter speeds and blend (focus stack) to achieve both feelings in one image? Hmmmmm. That might be a project for a summer afternoon. There are tons of small and large falls, cascades and significant river rapids on the Youghiogheny River.
Paul, I use this technique a lot with waterfalls. Sometimes the water is flowing at different rates in various parts of the image, and blending images with different shutter speeds allows you to pick and choose how different parts of the water look. In wider views of waterfalls sometimes the water flow is in brighter light than the dark background. By blending multiple exposures, you can get both properly exposed. Manually blending multiple images using PS masks is relatively easy for flowing water, since the water is somewhat diffuse you can easily blend by hand on the mask.
Kris, I am a big fan of using a telephoto lens to extract small parts of waterfalls like you did here. It creates a more intimate view that often leads to unique looking images. For me the water is really the star of the show in these type of images, I especially like the look of the water in the left 2/3’s of this image, your shutter speed created a wonderful look here.
In terms of your question on the light, all I can offer is a subjective opinion. If this were my image, I’d want to sculpt the light to focus the viewer on the center of the image, where I think the most interesting flows are located. I would gently burn the highlights in the ULC, and along the bottom edge to do that.
The other thing about the light here that catches my eye is the the whites in the water look warmer in the URC than they do in the rest of the image. This may be the reality of shooting dappled light. But my eye gets pulled to that warmer white in the URC, which maybe competes with the cooler whites in the left 2/3’s. Totally subjective, but I might cool the URC whites a bit. These are subjective nitpicks though, you have a really strong image as presented.
Very nice artistically. I also have concerns about the bright spots. Length of exposure is a matter of preference. The image stacking is an interesting, different, and complex approach.
Thanks everyone…I appreciate the feedback and the ideas. Blending is something I still don’t do, but can with some practice I’m sure. Back when I took this it was totally out of the question. With luck tomorrow we’ll get enough clouds to do some waterfall work here in the U.P. I can try different exposure times and Ed can walk me through the method (wink, wink…I’ll see if I can figure it out).
The warm spot on the right I kind of like, but could tone it down a bit. To me the warm tones are unusual in falls because everyone dials things back to neutral a lot of the time. It is subjective and I tried it, but changed it back to warm. I just like it. Shrug.
Kris, this looks great. It’s a fine mix of motion and detail. I like how my eye follows the line of rocks down from the upper left and the plunges into the lower right along with the falling water. A couple of thoughts; The yellowish spot (upper right) usually signifies a blown highlight turned down in raw processing (one way to reduce that, if you want, is to clone in none-yellow water with a low opacity brush, say 15%, possibly going over the area twice). I also feel that I’d like to see just a bit more at the top, depending on what is actually there, but will note that having that feeling means that I know there’s more outside the frame, which is not necessarily bad.
I think this is a great intimate scene of a waterfall, and IMO you did a great work based on the circumstances at hand.
I think that this is a very interesting technique that I want to try, also recmmended by @Ed_McGuirk in another posting (he giving the comment to change the ISO to keep the same aperture and exposure throughout the series of images).
If you have relatively even light across the scene, the goal is to shoot multiple brackets of the same composition with different shutter speeds, but keeping the exposure essentially the same. That means slightly bracketing ISO or Aperture to vary the shutter speed. You could also try small 1/3 stop brackets of shutter speed, since that may not change the exposure too much. You then have 2 or more images you can stack as layers in photoshop. The water will look different in each bracket. You then put a mask on one one layer and manually paint on the mask to brush in water from one image to another. Use a soft edged brush at low to mid opacity and paint to reveal the different looking water flows from the various brackets.
This technique has multiple uses. For example a long exposure of say 1 second gets the water looking good, but its long enough that leaves and ferns next to the falls move and go blurry. So use a 1 second bracket for the water, but shoot another one at a faster shutter speed (by varying ISO) to eliminate subject movement in the leaves, etc. Then blend the two together with masks. Because flowing water is usually diffuse, you don’t have to worry about edges when painting on the mask, it usually blends easily.
I also use this technique when shooting at the ocean, to get various brackets of how the waves look. It’s using the same principle.
Thanks Ed. I was at some falls today (only one came out well since the clouds burned off early) and I did use different shutter speeds with the same shot - I think just one looks fine, but I can play with the technique to see if it can be improved.
You need to know how to use Photoshop masks obviously, but there are lots of resources on how to do that if you are not overly familiar with them. Pick a base image that you wan to use as the starting point, say for the background rocks, vegetation etc. Make that the bottom layer. On top of that put another layer with a bracket you want to use for some or all of the water. Put a black mask on that top layer. Then with a soft edged brush, paint white on the mask to bring that part of the water into the base image below. Play with the opacity of the brush for different looks, 100% is okay, but you may want to use other opacities too. Experiment a bit.
Mask in Photoshop Originally black, paint white at various opacity (grey = less than 100% opacity)
the fuzziness at the edges is from using a soft edged brush. With 100% opacity in the LLC, I’m fully bringing in the base of the falls from the top layer. Only partially on the falls itself.
Quite cool. I am so new to Ps that I sometimes forget all it can do.
I have some bracketed shots of the sunset that are going to require this at the shoreline where the little waves changed from shot to shot. A straight-up HDR blend was awful. This might be the ticket.
