Flowing Water

Since I’ve been back from my overseas adventures, one of the subjects that has captivated me the most has been water.  It certainly captured my creative thinking during our latest excursion to the Portland Japanese Gardens.  One of the issues I’ve discussed before is how critical the shutter speed is for how the water turns out in an image.  It was no different this time around.  Except, when developing the images for the trip blog post, I was faced with the question - which exposure time is better? 

Now, “better” is a loaded term and begs the question, “Better for what?”  Which is exactly the question.  I’ve already showed you one of my images of the falls, so I might as well show you the other and explain why I selected one over the other.

The image immediately below was the image I used in the blog post.  It comes from the last set of exposures of this image, made at 1/8 sec at f/8, and ISO 200.  To get to this point, I’d adjusted the filters on my camera and the ISO to see the water texture at shutter speeds ranging from 5 seconds to 1/10th of a second.  As I’ve discussed before, moving water has several textures that look “right” and the actual shutter speeds needed to get those textures varies depending on the speed, volume and roughness of the water flow.  My groupings of exposures focused on the ones that appeared “right”, while the other exposures were tests to find which shutter speeds worked.

Of the three exposures at this setting, I selected the one that looked best.  By best I mean has the most appealing water textures (each image is different), the least disturbing splashes (one image was rejected immediately because of its ugly splash - this being an issue with these shorter shutter speeds, the longer ones tend to hide splashes), the reflection patterning of the water and, strangely enough, the most appealing bubbles in the water.

The competing image was one made at 2.5 seconds, at f/8, and ISO 400.  This image was selected over other similarly exposed images because of the texture of the falling water, the reflections and the lines created by the bubbles.

Why use the first over the second in the blog post?  I decided that, since several of my other images clearly showed the patterning caused by the waves in the water, for consistency sake, the image I used for the waterfall should do the same.  I placed the longer exposure image into the blog post and it just didn’t look right.  The other one did.  That’s it.  An aesthetic choice based on the fact that one looked better when viewed along side the other images in the story.  

Now that I’ve explained why, in my mind, one image was “better” than the other for use in the earlier blog post, I’ve got another question for you.

Which image do you like better?

I still haven’t answered that question for myself.