Monochrome Water at Caribou Ranch

A trio of very different images, in black and white…

Yes, it is certainly entertaining to use a slow shutter speed to get this effect with the water. (Get a tripod and amaze your friends!) Just as important, though, is to learn to “read” the creek for potentially interesting patterns. Simply blurring the water with no thought for the overall end composition isn’t quite enough. With time, you become able to translate what you see in the water with your naked, hairy eyeball into what it might look like on the sensor at various shutter speeds. This one, for example, seemed to work best for me at 1/6 of a second:

North Boulder Creek, #15. Caribou Ranch Open Space, Colorado, 2016

This photograph moves more into the “abstract zone”. If you look imaginatively, you might find a ghost-like human face, painted onto my camera’s sensor by the rapids with a 1/4 second exposure:

North Boulder Creek, #6. Caribou Ranch Open Space, Colorado, 2016

This last image is slightly less abstract (captured with a 2-second exposure), but the perspective is initially quite disorienting and confusing. (I like it when I can challenge the viewer a bit in this way.) After a few seconds, though, the eye begins to make sense of the scene, finally discerning which way is upstream and the general layout, flow, and topography of this small falls near the Blue Bird Mine site:

North Boulder Creek, #2. Caribou Ranch Open Space, Colorado, 2016