Waterfall #24

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The story behind this image

Are you a hard water or soft water photographer? Do you insist on freezing every last droplet with a super fast shutter speed, or do you take things easy and let moving water blur to a milky fog with exposures measured in geological time?

Me? I'm sort of in-between. I like some blur but not too much so that all detail is obliterated. This usually means shutter speeds of around 1/4 second for fast moving water such as this waterfall just above the Bodensee in central Austria.

Of course, once you're operating at these relatively slow shutter speeds then you're into tripod territory, which can pose problems if you need to crouch, Karate Kid style, on one foot on a slippy rock with hikers giving you funny looks.

That was how I found myself for this shot, so my usual 'semi-blurred' approach was abandoned in favour of a high speed hand-held photo.

You know - I kind of like being able to see all the detail in the water, and it seems to work in this case with a lovely swirl over the rock and gorgeous green glacier melt colour.

Maybe I'll try a few more high speed water shots, even when I'm not forced to, just to see what happens.

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Image data

Filename - waterfall 24.jpg

Camera - Canon 5D

Lens - 24-105mm zoom @ 75mm

Exposure - 1/200sec @ f11, ISO200

Location - Bodensee, Austria

This image - 800x640px JPEG

Conversion - ACR & PS-CS2

Comments - Fast shutter speed used to freeze movement.