Photography Tips: Taking Pictures of Water

So lets talk about water for a minute. Water is this beautiful thing. You can capture it in motion. You can freeze it for a second and capture all the droplets. Or you can let it run smooth, like a mist running through the river bed. Giving the picture almost a magical feel.

There is a trick to getting both types of images. Its called shutter speed. And when you decide how fast your shutter is going to go, you get a few choices on what water will look like. It took me forever to figure out this trick. And its so simple its almost scary. But here is the deal. The slower the shutter speed, the smoother the water is going to look. The fast the shutter speed, the more crisp, clear and frozen the water is going to look. There is a catch, Isn't there always? When you slow your shutter speed, you are letting more light into you camera, which can cause over exposed pictures. So there is a delicate balance.

The best way to shoot, is using your camera in shutter priority mode. A cloudy day works best, second only to low light time of days, such as dusk and dawn.( as seen in the first example) Because you need to leave your shutter open for a second, it will let it allot of light, potentially blowing out the image. Making its highlights overly bright. A polarizer filter can help with that. However using your shutter speed and watching your exposure dial can help you leave the shutter open longer and allow for the higher light. Experiment and you will find the best shutter time for your lighting.

However you don't always want to get up at the crack of dawn for a waterfall picture. There is a trick to getting silky water during higher daylight times. Try using you camera in aperture priority mode and setting your aperture to as high as it can get will leave the shutter open longer. It might get the silky effect you want.

Capturing the water droplets is easier then letting it run like silk. You need a fast shutter speed. Using aperture priority I zoomed on a part of my infant sons hand in the water faucet. I then over exposed it slightly ( but because i shoot in RAW, i could fix that easy) and took the snapshot. Even in the bad lighting conditions of a bathroom i got a pleasing image of water frozen. Again you can use your shutter mode to make your shutter speed fast, but watch your exposure meter to be sure you don't under or over expose your image beyond saving. Any other thing that helps? A flash. Even your on camera flash can freeze water. To take the image above I was in full manual mode. My Aperture was 9 and my shutter speed was 50, i used my flash. It allowed for some nice background light and the flash froze the water. Its one of my favorite ways to take pictures inside.