Re: PAW--Yet Another Waterfall

[Tom C]

To tell you the truth, I find most water fall shots that DON'T use a slow 
shutter speed to be boring snapshots that only document the fact that one 
was at a waterfall.  It's the blur-effect of slow shutter speeds that makes 
the shots more artful.

To each his own, but there's some kind of shots I never tire of seeing 
BECAUSE they are pretty... Rainbows, mountains, waterfalls, sunsets... and 
quite a few others.


Tom C.


From: "William Robb" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: PAW--Yet Another Waterfall
Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2004 10:15:57 -0600
----- Original Message -----
From: "Shel Belinkoff"
Subject: RE: PAW--Yet Another Waterfall
> Indeed!
>
> What really gets to me is the so frequent and seemingly well
accepted, and
> trite use of long exposures and blurred, smooth moving water.  How
much
> more interesting moving water photos might be if they showed the
water more
> like we see it, which, of course, would require shorter shutter
speeds.  I
> seem to recall reading somewhere that shutter speeds in the area of
1/15 or
> 1/30 would provide more realistic results, but I could well be
wrong about
> the exposure time.
1/30th is pretty close.
I'm not commenting on Peter's photo specifically her, so bear with
me.
Even on 35mm, sometimes you have to stop down rather a lot to get
sufficient depth of field, and this extends the exposure time.
On large format, it is possible to break the (sometimes) several
second times required to secure exposure down into a multiple short
exposure session, but this isn't really practical if the required
exposure is more than a second or two.
Imagine cocking and shooting 30 times on the same frame to build up a
1 second exposure from 1/30 second exposures.
It can be done, I've done it, and the results are somewhere in
between a short exposure and a long one.
>
> For those of you who photograph water scenes, how about moving away
from
> such clich� photos and try to put a little more thought and
creativity into
> what you're doing instead of making what is essentially the same
photograph
> over and over.
One could say the same thing about any photographic style, be it
landscape photography or shooting down and out street people for
pathos effect.
With waterfalls there can be some very real technical problems with
going to a different approach.
William Robb