Water Abstracts, Eldorado Springs Canyon

Water, Rock, and Stick. Eldorado Springs Canyon, Colorado, 2014

Lately, I have been having a lot of fun with the water. It is spring, after all.

Coincidentally, Ken Rockwell (the man folks apparently love to hate) recently posted some images showing the effect of different shutter speeds on the appearance of the water in your final image. His post is sort of useful, except…it all depends…

The appearance of water in your LCD will depend not only on shutter speed, as Ken points out, but also on three other critical details…

…how far away is the water?

…how fast is it moving?

…how close are you zooming in or how wide are you zooming out (both related to the first point).

Luckily, with digital, you can simply experiment until you get it right–“right” being the way you want it.

With your water images, you can try capturing the “big picture” (as the above image illustrates), or you might move in and look for unusual compositions and patterns, as in this short photo essay: