Creating a new style.

[Ken Rennie]

Normally if I couldn't take the top and bottom of the falls I wouldn't bother but occasionally I would photograph just the base of the falls but recently I have been experimenting with images of portions of waterfalls. Clashnessie Falls, Assynt, North West Scotland is a 60ft high waterfall and this image was taken on a cold and wet day. I have never liked this image, or any other image of Clashnessie that I have taken over the years, something to do with the scrubby grasses at the base.

I tried a pattern image of the water and although it was different my eye couldn't find anything to rest on and there didn't seem to be any flow to the image.

However looking at this square image I liked the left hand side with its one main dropping stream hitting the rocks and splitting. Lots of dodging and burning later and I get to this point. I like this image a lot, for me it has shape and flow with texture and contrast.

So I now have a new style for my waterfall images. However I can see lots of problems trying to produce this style of image while standing beside a river. Firstly the shape and flow only becomes evident with long'ish exposures, this is 1/5s. Secondly scanning a waterfall for trying to find interesting portions could get very boring, however practice may quicken the process. Comments welcome. Ken

 

[IainGFoulds]

… Exciting, strong, clean images.

 

[AlanLichty]

I like where you are going with this and the results as well. Your last comment is the important one - practice makes the task not seem tedious at all. When I first moved to the Pacific NW and discovered the joy of living near lots of waterfalls I quickly tired of the general views of the falls and started playing around with small scenes within the waterfalls. My favorite tool for this is my 100-400mm lens which lets me get quite specific about the small features within the waterfalls and I look forward to lurking around waterfalls with small features like the ones you show above.

 

[JimFox]

Hey Ken,

It's always exciting to see an old subject in new ways.

I will say I really like the original image you posted. I do agree, that with #2 there isn't anyone thing for the eye to settle on. In fact there is a thin vertical stream of water that's just left of center that seems to divide #2 into 2 parts.

For #3 you took the left side of that divide in #2. So you found an interesting portion, and I like how you processed it.

I agree that this might be hard to spot while actually out in the field, but I think it's possible.

Your thread here made me think of Ben and how much he would have enjoyed this. He loved waterfalls, and he always enjoyed when you came up with new ideas for waterfall photography/processing and he would go out and try to implement your lessons in the photos he took.

 

[Ken Rennie]

Hey Ken,

It's always exciting to see an old subject in new ways.

I will say I really like the original image you posted. I do agree, that with #2 there isn't anyone thing for the eye to settle on. In fact there is a thin vertical stream of water that's just left of center that seems to divide #2 into 2 parts.

For #3 you took the left side of that divide in #2. So you found an interesting portion, and I like how you processed it.

I agree that this might be hard to spot while actually out in the field, but I think it's possible.

Your thread here made me think of Ben and how much he would have enjoyed this. He loved waterfalls, and he always enjoyed when you came up with new ideas for waterfall photography/processing and he would go out and try to implement your lessons in the photos he took.

Thanks for the reply Jim. Ben was always very positive and encouraging with his posts and I will miss them. Ken

 

[Jameel Hyder]

Interesting approach. I do like and tend to look for smaller scenes esp. when the waterfalls have such a variety of flows like the one here. The high contrast approach to processing this works pretty nicely.

 

[Ken Rennie]

I like where you are going with this and the results as well. Your last comment is the important one - practice makes the task not seem tedious at all. When I first moved to the Pacific NW and discovered the joy of living near lots of waterfalls I quickly tired of the general views of the falls and started playing around with small scenes within the waterfalls. My favorite tool for this is my 100-400mm lens which lets me get quite specific about the small features within the waterfalls and I look forward to lurking around waterfalls with small features like the ones you show above.

Thanks Alan. The main problem is that there are few, if any, of this type of stepped cascade around here. These are a good 7-8 hr drive North of my house. Waterfalls are hardly flowing here. We haven't had any rain for the last 3 weeks and none is forecast for another week, highly unusual as we usually get 200 wet days a year. Ken

 

[AlanLichty]

Thanks Alan. The main problem is that there are few, if any, of this type of stepped cascade around here. These are a good 7-8 hr drive North of my house. Waterfalls are hardly flowing here. We haven't had any rain for the last 3 weeks and none is forecast for another week, highly unusual as we usually get 200 wet days a year. Ken

I can sympathize with the lack of rain as we are in the same situation. We had a really wet March and April and then someone turned the faucet off. May was quite dry for us and now there isn't a cloud in sight and no predictions for rain anywhere in the forecast. All of the ephemeral falls I was shooting in early May are gone now. The only upside to this is that the big waterfalls that flow year round will start dropping their flow rate soon and we might get more cascades instead of firehoses. 7-8 hour drives (each way) aren't much fun as a day trip.