Still Water
How do you photograph birds and waterfalls on the same hike? A little telephoto experimentation.
During a recent hike at Babcock Nature Preserve I encountered a lovely heron. So of course I could not take my telephoto lens off my camera or I could have missed the opportunity to capture the perfect shot of a majestic bird.
So I decided to try out a very different technique for photographing a waterfall. The standard “fuzzy” waterfall set-up: tripod, low shutter speed, and tight aperture would require me to switch back to my standard lens.
So instead I set my ISO to 3200, sometimes 6400 in the shadows, opened my aperture wide, and zoomed in for some 1/2000th or faster shots to motion-capture the playful dance of the waterfall. The high ISO static removed in post-processing.
Did I finally get a good shot of the heron? Nope, but you can see the best one of the elusive bird on my FB page.
What do you think of this technique? Want to give it a try yourself? If so I’d love to see what you capture!