Remarkable Earth
As a photographer, I spend a lot of time outdoors, capturing the beauty of creation. The forests, the skies, the mountains – I love all of it. But, as I stand with my camera in the early morning hours, taking in the Earth’s majesty, nothing strikes me more than its oceans, lakes, and rivers. My love of the water began in early childhood. Each year, my parents took my brother and I on family trips to the east coast, and spending time at the beach, my love for the ocean and all things water grew. I spent hours out in the surf swimming, riding the waves into shore, and building sandcastles, just waiting for that rogue wave to crash over it and take it back out to sea. Today, my love of the water remains very much alive. It’s where I find my peace. I love to surf, enjoy a good swim, or join my four-year-old in his favorite pastime, throwing rocks in the river. I find great beauty in the water, from the curl of a powerful wave to the meandering flow of a stream, and I love how the water blends into the landscape around it.
My landscape photography often centers around my love of the water and its beauty. I enjoy capturing the stillness of a quiet lake and the reflections of what surrounds it, the waves gently splashing against the rocky shoreline. Likewise, it’s exhilarating snapping the power and motion of a fast-careening river, heightening all the senses.
Technically speaking, there are myriad ways to capture the beauty of the water, and the one I gravitate toward most is slow shutter speed photography. Slow shutter speed photography is achieved by slowing your camera’s shutter speed, leaving the shutter open for a greater length of time. This results in a longer exposure time, which brings more light into the lens and allows you to capture a dark scene. It also allows you to capture moving points of light and creates a blurred motion effect, which adds a bit of magic to shots in motion.
The slowed shutter speed works in harmony with your camera’s aperture and ISO settings, so adjustments must be made to compensate, depending on the amount of surrounding light. The greater the light, the lower you will need to set your ISO, allowing the sensor to absorb less light. Likewise, a higher aperture setting also allows less light to reach the sensor. Of course, this all depends on the effect you are trying to achieve. Remember, higher aperture settings result in less depth of field. It’s a delicate balance, depending on your desired outcome.
There are a variety of techniques of slow shutter speed photography. These are: 1) panning, where the moving subject is in focus and the background is blurred; 2) motion blur, where the moving subject is blurred, and the background is in focus; and 3) light painting, where your camera captures only the light, all while the shutter is left open. Gaining control of your shutter speed, with the respective adjustments, gives you the ability to capture moving points of light and to blur moving subjects, making it an important tool for expressing movement.
I used the motion blur technique while shooting most of the photographs shown in this column, with my subject being that of water. I captured the motion of the water by leaving my shutter open longer and lengthening the exposure time. This technique made my photographs much more dynamic, even magical. Flowing water takes the appearance of threads of silk, and waves crashing against the shoreline are shrouded in haze. Such techniques can heighten the appeal of your images, giving them a dreamlike effect.
Here are a few tips to get you started:
Stability is key. When leaving the shutter open, the camera must remain perfectly still. Using a tripod helps. A remote shutter switch is another important tool. Snapping the shot without touching the camera reduces the likelihood you will get a blurred image.
Light is key. When using slow shutter speed techniques, limiting the amount of light that reaches the camera sensor will allow you to leave the shutter open longer, enabling you to capture more motion. It is easier to achieve this in the very early morning or nighttime hours, using the appropriate camera settings. This can also be done during the day. A Neutral Density or ND filter attached to the front of your lens can help. This filters the amount of light that reaches your camera sensor, giving you more control.
Creativity is key. What are you trying to achieve? Whether you are trying to project movement in your landscape or street photography, think about how you want to showcase motion and have fun experimenting.
My love of the water and the remarkable beauty of the planet continues to draw me outdoors, camera in tow. It also makes it particularly heartbreaking to see the damaging impacts of humanity on our oceans and planet. We all have the responsibility to protect our environment, and photographers can make an impact though storytelling. Our imagery can call attention to environmental concerns and inspire people to take action. The iLCP (International League of Conservation Photographers) is a global community of professional photographers and filmmakers driving conservation impact through ethical, visual storytelling. They are individuals with great talent, using their skills to promote change. To learn more about this incredible organization or partner with them, visit: https://conservationphotographers.org.