Flowing Water

Balanced Boulder and Waterfall. Near Guanella Pass, Colorado, 2013

One of the first fun things you do when you get even slightly serious about photography–and you have a tripod handy–is to run out to the local stream and capture an image of water at a slow shutter speed so that you get that wonderful smooth, flowy look you have seen in all those sweet National Geographic shots. Well, I certainly did anyway. The hard part is trying to create a photograph that is different enough from all the others of this type that it causes the viewer to pause for an extra second when they look at it. That is quite difficult.

I’m still not there yet, but the above image is an attempt to move in that direction. I was attracted to the one rock that appears to be balanced in the middle of the waterfall (how did it get there?) and I also very much liked the multiple cascade patterns of the fall itself–so, I had the beauty of the water along with a definite subject, that unusual lone rock (how did it get there?).

This picture still isn’t quite unique enough to make it into the pantheon of spectacular and unforgetable images…but I am working my way slowly along that bumpy road and I at least know what I have to do.

So, when you are out making your soft, flowy water pictures, know that soft, flowy water is not enough to make your picture any different than a million others like it. There has to be some special aspect to the image which captures the imagination…maybe something about the patterns in the water…the unusual flora or fauna around the waterfall…some interesting human activity going on…spectacular light.

So lets you and I continue the journey and see what we might yet discover in the water as we wander the Earth.