Water
There was a several-year period where I was captivated, indeed enamored, with photographing water. During that period I was tilled with excitement at the thought of exploring that amazing substance through photography. If you have any doubt about that, go to the Dan’s Photos section of the website and check out Themes > Movement in Water (and don’t forget to click the View More at the bottom the page), or to the Monograph > Santiam. Or pretty much any category of images from any location - if there was water, I studied it through photography. There is something truly special about water and photography is a wonderful way to explore its characteristics.
I hadn’t really forgotten about water as a subject, but recently my exposure to it has been a bit limited. Mind you, the Netherlands has a lot of static water, which I certainly took advantage of with reflections. But not much more than that. No rough flowing creeks or waterfalls (we may go hunting for some in the Maastricht area at some point), no rocky shorelines for waves to crash onto.
The trip to Sweden reacquainted me with water and reinvigorated my passion for it. You see, Sweden has a lot of water. A lot of it. More than you’d think. Lots of lakes, lots of streams, lots of coastline. And lots of opportunities to explore.
Of course I couldn’t bypass the opportunity to incorporate reflections in some of the images. Face it, that’s what I’d been working with earlier this year and they are just so easy to incorporate into an image.
Even if it means waiting as the surface ripples from wind gusts work their way across the lake and the reflections reappear.
And certainly our first real exposure to running water was . . . how to put it? Not very glorious. Still, it was a reminder of what I’d been missing and it was an opportunity to play with some filters to adjust the exposure time.
However, the opportunities to explore the wonders of water consistently appeared and when they did, and I was smart enough to recognize it, I took my time. Because photographing water well is a process and getting the right shutter speed to covey the nature of the water takes time, experimentation and judgment. And to make real discoveries from photographing water takes even more time and an open mind to recognize what is there because there is often more than the eye immediately sees.
Moving water has a feel to it. You experience the character of that water as it moves over and around obstacles. And over the years I’ve come to learn that you have to have the right shutter speed to capture a certain feel in the water (some locations have several different qualities it can convey, and each has its own shutter speed). And, of course, there is no generic “right” shutter speed for all flowing water. You have to experiment until you get it right, swapping out neutral density filters and adjusting the ISO to get just the right shutter speed. And of course, you have to have the judgment to know when it’s “right.” It’s nice when you do. There is a huge difference between a photograph where you can see that it is moving water and a photograph where you can hear the water splashing.
But it wasn’t just moving water. Much of the water in Sweden seemed to have a lot of tannin in it, making the water in some streams have a brownish, sometimes tea color to them. At some locations, that turned still water almost black. Frequently, it made streams rather unphotogenic. But under the right circumstances, it could make for a very unusual image.
And at one location in Tivedens National Park, the water was downright mysterious, if not creepy.
Of course, water does wonders with light and colors if given the opportunity. I spent a good couple of hours one afternoon at one location photographing, experimenting, playing with what water had to offer me and my camera as the day waned. Sometimes, the water offered more than the initial glance revealed. With the image below, while the reflections of the clouds in the water are lovely and were what initially caught my eye, the ripples of the waves as they pass through the reeds add an extra layer of complexity and interest to the image, even if you didn’t notice it immediately. Once I’d recognized that, it was the character of the ripples in the reeds that controlled when I pressed the shutter for an image.
As that afternoon passed, and I exhausted the potentials for more traditional images, I started looking round (note: that’s photography speak for I got bored and wondered what else I could photograph). Duh . . . . I was surrounded by water, and good light. What more does one need other than to look and see.
Eventually as the sun started approaching the horizon and the colors in the sky and water started changing, I started experimenting with exposure times and, with that, the character of the water started to change and I had to figure out how to capture the qualities I wanted in an image.
And as time passed, so did the light and the colors it cast. Fifteen minutes can make a world of difference between similar types of images.
Of course, in-between those images, there was time to recompose for a more traditional, representational image, which of course means pulling off some of the neutral density filters to change the quality of the water.
That’s how the trip went. Not on all days were we blessed with water, or perhaps I wasn’t in the frame of mind to take advantage of it (I’ll admit to quite a bit of the latter - we’re still slowly getting back our photography groove). But there would be instances where water would appear and the opportunity seemed unavoidable. And so I would stop, pull out the gear, find a good composition, and then start to experiment to discover what the water had to offer me image-making wise.
Other times, something would catch my eye to make me stop to figure out why my eye was attracted to a scene. And then I’d realize that yes, my old friend water was offering me something I hadn’t noticed before, spreading color in an unusual manner that warranted pulling out the camera.
Often the opportunity was obvious. But still, they required effort to find a composition, and even more effort to make something that has some coherency to it, particularly when you have a variety of different speeds of water flow you’re trying to capture. Sometimes it’s not possible to make a coherent image, other times you find a shutter speed that offers a reasonable, if not totally satisfactory, compromise.
Not all images are entirely successful, but for me, with water the effort is always worth it.
The reason that’s so is because the effort you make at one location to study water and its characteristics often pays off in other locations in very interesting and at times different ways. Even when the character of the water is drastically different, just being attuned that water has hidden secrets keeps you on the lookout for lovely opportunities to add qualities to an image you would otherwise be unaware of.
Once you understand that water has a lot to offer you photographically, you realize that when you’re around water, all you have to do is look at it and you’ll discover its offerings. Is the above photograph a graphic composition with the boat, or a study of light playing on water?
Whether you’re at the ocean or in a narrow valley, water can surprise you and lead you to make an image you weren’t even thinking about, nonetheless looking for.
So if you’re around water, stop and study it. It will be worth your time. You may find out that even on a dark dreary day that if you study water, and take your time to photograph it, the photograph reveals something to you that you hadn’t noticed with your eyes.
Much of the time, it’s something special about water. Other times . . . it’s something else.
Yeah, from a water perspective, Sweden was a good trip. A very pleasant reminder of why I love to photograph, and why I especially love to photograph water.