Eldorado Water (A Photographic Essay)

Eldorado Water, #17. Eldorado Springs Canyon, Colorado, 2015

I have several previous blog posts that touch on the subject of water. Just plug “water” in the search box on my site and you’ll find them. At least one discusses the technical aspects of photographing this lovely, liquid, subject.

I find water fascinating. I suppose it comes from having spent so many years in the parched desert Southwest. Water is life-sustaining, and just plain beautiful…an alpine stream threading through wildflower tundra in July…an intermittent spring stream carving through granite bowls in the desert…a pounding 3,000-foot cascading, undulating, ribbon of white in Yosemite…it all strikes a primordial chord from deep within us, I think.

Yes, too much of it can ruin your day–or your life (search my site for “2013 Flood”, for example)–but, generally, water is our friend. What is it those biologists like to say? That something like 95% of our body weight comes from water? Makes me wonder what makes up the other 5%!

Trying to photograph water is always a challenge. What is the story you want to tell? What is your personal vision? What attracts your eye? What do you really see and feel when faced with, say, the heavy spray and swirling, twirling spring runoff as it roars through Eldorado Springs Canyon? What do you want to communicate with the viewer? All these fuzzy questions–and their fuzzy answers–will lead you to very un-fuzzy and cold references to ISO, neutral density filters, shutter speed, and so on.

But it starts with the vision.

I like searching out and uncovering unusual patterns in the water. Patterns unseen except with the camera at certain settings. I also like unusual perspectives and slightly abstract scenes.

I examine the currents and bubbles as they wrap and warp around the rocks and along the bank. I examine the spray patterns…the waves and curves. It takes practice to train your hairy eyeball to “see” what the water will look like at different shutter speeds. I’m still learning. The more you do it, though, the easier it becomes.

Most of the time, I prefer a slower shutter speed–enough to give the water a soft, velvety effect, but not so much that all detail in the water is lost. On a rare occasion, I’ll actually push the shutter speed the other direction to freeze the action–1/1000th, even 1/8000th if necessary. It all comes down to–as I said above–what you want to communicate.

What follows are a series of images made over the past couple of days in Eldorado Springs Canyon–“Eldo”–just south of Boulder. This is actually sort of a photo essay project with “Spring: The Promise of New Life“ as the theme.

Just for fits, mitts, and grins, and for the technophobes among you, I’ll post the shutter speed for each. Keep in mind, though, these images aren’t really about shutter speed…they are about an idea, a feeling, and a story.

At 1/8th of a second:

Eldorado Water, #1. Eldorado Springs Canyon, Colorado, 2015

At 1/5th of a second:

Eldorado Water, #2. Eldorado Springs Canyon, Colorado, 2015

At 1/250th of a second, to slow the movement of the bobbing bubbles:

Eldorado Water, #5. Eldorado Springs Canyon, Colorado, 2015

At 1/10th of a second. Note the American Dipper (Cinclus mexicanus) readying for another leap into the current for a meal and a bath. I was hoping to catch the bird in sharp focus and the water as you see it, but didn’t quite manage it–thus a slight bird blur boo-boo: