Tips For Creek and Waterfall Photography
My favorite thing to do is to capture creek and waterfall scenes. The majority of my shooting year is spent rock hopping and wading in cold mountain creeks. I love it more than any other niche in landscape photography, so I’ve learned a few things along the way.
The great thing about this type of photography is that it doesn’t require much gear. Since I’m a minimalist I love that! I’m always searching for the simplest and most efficient way to do something. This gives me more time to focus on the creative, fun side of photography, which is why I do it in the first place.
All you need is a sturdy tripod (and it doesn’t have to be the really expensive kind), a good camera with a nice lens (preferably a wide angle, in my opinion), and a circular polarizing filter.
I’m at the point now where I only bring one lens when shooting creeks and waterfalls. My Cannon 16-35 f4 lens. I’ll explain why. My first year of shooting creeks and waterfalls I used my 24-105 lens, but by the end of the year I noticed that time and time again I came upon situations where I needed a wider angle to include certain foreground elements in compositions I was seeking to capture. I found that the majority of the time I couldn’t just back up to get the wider angle (because one step back meant plunging into a set of rapids, a deep pool, or backing into a large rock). It starting happening so frequently that I finally broke down and bought the 16-35 lens.
I was immediately happy with my decision. The extra 8mm on the wide angle end opened up numerous possibilities that were previously unavailable to me, and to my surprise I found that I rarely needed to go beyond 35mm on the other end. The vast majority of the time I needed the wider angle. The wide angle gives you a lot more flexibility when seeking to include foreground elements in your photos.
Boone Fork Creek on Grandfather Mountain, N.C. Here is an example of a composition I would have been unable to capture without my wide angle 16-35 f4 lens. Photo shot at ISO 100, 18mm, f/14 at 1.6 seconds.
Having said that, If you don’t have a wide angle lens at the moment, don’t feel like you have to go out and get one immediately. Go out in the field and experiment and see what suits your particular eye first. Everyone is different, but for me the wide angle is perfect. I don’t bother bringing my zoom lens unless I know the circumstances are going to require it (which for me is infrequently).
The best days to shoot creeks and waterfalls are cloudy ones. Overcast days produce boring, flat light conditions for many types of photography, but they are perfect when you are down at the bottom of a creek.
Mainly for two reasons:
1. The canopy above a creek is usually open (or partially open) allowing the light of a cloudy day to filter down softly to the creek or waterfall below. This gives the sense of a directional light source, which is important for adding depth to a photograph (when I use the word “depth” I mean giving the photo a more three dimensional feel to it, compared to a photo that has relatively flat light where there is little contrast between the light and dark areas in a scene).
2. Water is highly reflective and often much brighter than the surrounding foliage and shadows within a scene. This also adds a sense of depth and natural contrast to creek and waterfall scenes (even on cloudy days).
By comparison, if you try to shoot in direct sunlight the dynamic range becomes way too much for your camera to handle. Water becomes blindingly bright and the bright areas on trees and foliage are exponentially brighter than the darker shadows. The brightness of direct sunlight will also wash out your colors and the subtle textures and details that will only show up on cloudy days.
A little rain is great too, as it will often produce mist or fog that will enhance the mood of your photos, and also give you a shimmering wet look that will increase the natural contrast and color saturation of a scene even further. The difference between shooting on cloudy days and bright sunlit days is enormous. I can’t stress this enough.
There are two things you can do to improve your creek/waterfall images immediately:
1. Shoot on cloudy days.
2. Use a circular polarizing filter. If you just do these two things you will be amazed at how much better your photos will instantly become. A quick side note though. Even if you capture a photo on a cloudy day you will still need to continue to develop that sense of depth and directional light when you edit your photos, but that’s a topic for a future blog.
A polarizing filter is a must. The two biggest reasons are that it cuts down reflective glare from the water, and it brings out added color and contrast (by reducing reflective glare on foliage and other objects throughout the scene).
Over exposing water is always a problem but a polarizing filter reduces this problem greatly, allowing you to increase your exposure time to bring out darker areas of your image without blowing out the highlights in your water. A good rule of thumb is to expose for the water in your scene. (Increasing your exposure until the water is almost overexposed). I always have my blown highlight alert “blinkies” activated on my camera so I know when my water is getting overexposed. As always, it’s good to follow the “expose to the right” rule. You will always get higher quality files this way.
A couple of things to be aware of when using a polarizing filter. Depending on the light angle, it will allow you to see through the surface of water to the bottom of a creek. Generally a nice effect but it also might remove that beautiful tree reflection that you may like.
It may also darken wet rocks and other areas of your scene to a degree that you don’t want. In this case you can either back off the polarizing effect and “split the difference,” or work to balance the issue out in post-processing by bringing up your darks and shadows.
If you have never used a polarizing filter before it’s good to experiment with it and notice exactly what it’s doing to your scene as you slowly turn the filter. Notice how it affects areas differently throughout the scene as you rotate it. It’s important to get it just right before pressing that shutter button, as it may affect your composition. (i.e. do I want that spot of foliage to be darkened at the expense of having that area of rocks overly bright and washed out looking?) And remember, you don’t want to necessarily crank up the polarizing effect to 100 percent just because you can. Study the composition carefully and see what it calls for.
Vertical view of English Falls. It would have been impossible for me to capture the subtle textures, colors, and fine detail in this scene if I had taken this photo on a sunny day. Photo shot at ISO 100, 16mm, f/11, at 1.6 seconds
One last thing about polarizing filters. It will boost the contrast and color of your images. So you will often not need to add much (or any) contrast to your scene when processing your file. The same applies to color. A polarizing filter makes a huge difference with this type of shooting. If you have never used one you are in for a real treat! It will instantly improve your creek and waterfall shots.
Another general rule for this type of photography is to leave the sky out of the shot. On cloudy days the sky will almost always get blown out if you expose for the rest of the scene correctly. Having large blown out white areas does not look good in a composition of otherwise beautiful colors and textures. There are exceptions to this rule. Sometimes I will include a little more sky if I feel like the balance of the composition requires it. And every once in a while (depending on the light conditions) you can capture a good exposure of some blue grey clouds, or a patch of blue sky peaking through the clouds (but typically the difference in brightness between the sky and the rest of the scene will be too great for your camera to capture).
Now let’s talk about shutter speed. Shutter speed is very important when capturing the character of flowing water. Generally speaking, longer shutter speeds will give you a silky smooth effect, while shorter ones will give you more texture (up to the point of capturing individual water droplets). There is an element of personal taste as to which end of the spectrum you gravitate towards. In my experience I have learned that bigger waterfalls generally look better with faster shutter speeds. The reason for this is they tend to have large surface areas of water that wind up looking flat and indistinct at longer shutter speeds (like a white featureless blob). Using quicker shutter speeds in this case will give the water more definition and texture, giving more interest to your composition. I’ve found the opposite to be true with smaller waterfalls that have multiple cascading ledges. These tend to work well with longer shutter speeds as you wind up getting multiple, beautiful streaming lines along the cascading rock features.
Eastatoe Falls is known for its unique, cascading staircase rock formations that look amazing at longer shutter speeds. Photo shot at ISO 100, 22mm, f/13, at 1/5th of a second.
Overall, my personal preference leans towards longer shutter speeds. Longer exposures provide long flowing lines that can really enhance your composition. It’s a magical experience when you line up for a creek shot but don’t realize how beautiful the compositional lines are until you take that longer exposure and see it for yourself on the preview screen.
Also, be aware that longer shutter speeds can result in blurry leaves and foliage (even on calm days as flowing water creates air flow). There is often an acceptable amount of leaf blur if it occurs in background areas that are less noticeable, but larger foreground leaves that are blurry will be obvious and not look good (especially in a print). In this case you can take one exposure for your water, and a second faster exposure for your leaves. You can then blend the two exposures together in Photoshop (which is easier to do than you might think).
With exposure times, there is often a sweet spot where you get just the right amount of smoothness and texture. Every composition is a little different, so have fun experimenting and see what happens!
The last tip I will give you for now is to use the hyperfocal distance technique to achieve sharpness throughout your image.
Here’s a quick definition of hyperfocal distance: It is the focus point in your image that will give you the greatest depth of field from front to back.
Let’s say you are capturing a foreground cascade that is 5 feet from your camera lens, but you also want the background trees in your composition to be in focus as well. To get both your foreground cascade and your background trees to be acceptably sharp you will need to use a hyperfocal distance calculation. My favorite quick and easy way of calculating hyperfocal distance is to use the “double the distance” method. If your cascade is 5 feet from your lens then just double the distance and you will get 10 feet. Then just pick a spot that is 10 feet from your lens and focus on it to get the greatest depth of field possible for you image. You will also need to stop down to a smaller aperture (I typically choose somewhere between f11 and f14). If you are unsure you can always check your image preview screen to check for sharpness from front to back and make adjustments as needed.
It’s better to check for sharpness in the field than to not find out you’ve got a blurry photo until you get home and see it on your computer screen (trust me, I’ve done this and it’s a horrible feeling knowing you can’t fix it unless you go back and re-take the exact same photo, which is not always possible due to the ever changing conditions in Nature).
There are other ways to calculate hyperfocal distance but the “double the distance method” is the easiest (in my opinion) and it works great.
For those who want a highly detailed, technical explanation of hyperfocal distance, here is the link to a great article from photographylife.com: Hyperfocal Distance Explained
That’s all I’ve got for this article my friends! Always be thoughtful and purposeful with everything you do, as this will help you to improve faster. And above all, just go out and have fun! It is one of the great Joys in life to discover beauty and partake of it.
Check out my next article to get some tips for composing creek and waterfall shots.
