Backcountry Waterfalls Photography
North Carolina Travelog #11
Pisgah National Forest - Thu, 21 Sep 2023. 2:30pm
I've written before about techniques for photographing waterfalls. Creating the effect of water looking like silk sheets requires using a long exposure time. How long? It depends on the water flow and the degree of the effect one wants to create. Usually I look for a minimum of 0.25 seconds exposure time (as in my blog from Bassi Falls in 2021), to 0.5 - 1.0 seconds (as at Looking Glass Falls yesterday), to sometimes even longer than 2.0 seconds (as at Madison Falls in Olympic National Park).
Capturing a good picture with a long exposure time requires mounting the camera to prevent movement. If it moves even slightly while the shutter is open, the picture gets all blurry and is basically digital trash. One obvious way to keep a camera from moving is to mount it on a tripod. You see photographers (and videographers) using tripods all the time. I have a lightweight folding trip I bring on trips:
I used my nice tripod at Cathedral Falls in West Virginia a few days ago, for example. Note that the picture above was made hand-holding a camera. With normal automatic settings a camera will select a faster shutter speed to prevent blurring. The pic above had a 1/60 second exposure. You can see the water looks kind of blobby when recorded at that speed.
Here's a picture I took with the tripod-mounted camera and a 1/5 sec exposure time:
See the "silky sheet" effect of the water? That's a motion blur, from the droplets of water moving some distance in the span of 0.2 seconds. The foliage is a little blurry because it's moving slightly in the breeze. The rocks are sharp because they're not moving.
Okay, so that's a cool thing I can do with my tripod. But even though that trip is light and foldable, I still don't always want to carry it on hikes. That Cathedral Falls trip wasn't really a hike... it was a walk of about 100 yards. ...Okay, it was a scramble of about 100 yards up rain-slicked rocks next to and in a stream. But the point is, it was short. I'd rather not bear the weight and bulk of the tripod on hikes of a mile or more.
That's where I get around to the real subject of this blog: my trusty hiking pole!
I've had this hiking pole for at least 10 years, I think. It's a bit different from most of the poles you seek trail hikers use because of its grip. Instead of a "pistol" grip, one where you curl your fingers around a molded handhold on the pole, this pole has a pommel grip. It's topped with a rounded cork knob that you cup with the palm of your hand, like the pommel on a saddle.
There's also another thing about this pole that sets it apart from most others. That pommel on the top can be removed. It unscrews from the pole, leaving a screw mount exposed.
That screw mount is un-coincidentally the standard size for a camera's screw mount.
So in a matter of a few seconds I can remove the cap from my pole and screw the pole onto the base of my camera. Then I have a monopod to help stabilize my camera.
A monopod isn't as good as a tripod, of course. The tripod is genuinely stable. (Remember that math lesson about "three points establish a plane"?) The monopod still allows the camera to wobble while I hold it. But it cuts down a lot on the wobble. And I can brace the camera against something else, too, like my stomach, to further reduce its movement.
Using my trusty hiking pole as an impromptu camera monopod is how I get long-exposure pictures in the backcountry like this picture (with a 0.2 sec exposure time) I shared in my previous blog at Discovery Falls.
Pisgah National Forest - Thu, 21 Sep 2023. 2:30pm
I've written before about techniques for photographing waterfalls. Creating the effect of water looking like silk sheets requires using a long exposure time. How long? It depends on the water flow and the degree of the effect one wants to create. Usually I look for a minimum of 0.25 seconds exposure time (as in my blog from Bassi Falls in 2021), to 0.5 - 1.0 seconds (as at Looking Glass Falls yesterday), to sometimes even longer than 2.0 seconds (as at Madison Falls in Olympic National Park).
Capturing a good picture with a long exposure time requires mounting the camera to prevent movement. If it moves even slightly while the shutter is open, the picture gets all blurry and is basically digital trash. One obvious way to keep a camera from moving is to mount it on a tripod. You see photographers (and videographers) using tripods all the time. I have a lightweight folding trip I bring on trips:
I used my nice tripod at Cathedral Falls in West Virginia a few days ago, for example. Note that the picture above was made hand-holding a camera. With normal automatic settings a camera will select a faster shutter speed to prevent blurring. The pic above had a 1/60 second exposure. You can see the water looks kind of blobby when recorded at that speed.
Here's a picture I took with the tripod-mounted camera and a 1/5 sec exposure time:
See the "silky sheet" effect of the water? That's a motion blur, from the droplets of water moving some distance in the span of 0.2 seconds. The foliage is a little blurry because it's moving slightly in the breeze. The rocks are sharp because they're not moving.
Okay, so that's a cool thing I can do with my tripod. But even though that trip is light and foldable, I still don't always want to carry it on hikes. That Cathedral Falls trip wasn't really a hike... it was a walk of about 100 yards. ...Okay, it was a scramble of about 100 yards up rain-slicked rocks next to and in a stream. But the point is, it was short. I'd rather not bear the weight and bulk of the tripod on hikes of a mile or more.
That's where I get around to the real subject of this blog: my trusty hiking pole!
I've had this hiking pole for at least 10 years, I think. It's a bit different from most of the poles you seek trail hikers use because of its grip. Instead of a "pistol" grip, one where you curl your fingers around a molded handhold on the pole, this pole has a pommel grip. It's topped with a rounded cork knob that you cup with the palm of your hand, like the pommel on a saddle.
There's also another thing about this pole that sets it apart from most others. That pommel on the top can be removed. It unscrews from the pole, leaving a screw mount exposed.
That screw mount is un-coincidentally the standard size for a camera's screw mount.
So in a matter of a few seconds I can remove the cap from my pole and screw the pole onto the base of my camera. Then I have a monopod to help stabilize my camera.
A monopod isn't as good as a tripod, of course. The tripod is genuinely stable. (Remember that math lesson about "three points establish a plane"?) The monopod still allows the camera to wobble while I hold it. But it cuts down a lot on the wobble. And I can brace the camera against something else, too, like my stomach, to further reduce its movement.
Using my trusty hiking pole as an impromptu camera monopod is how I get long-exposure pictures in the backcountry like this picture (with a 0.2 sec exposure time) I shared in my previous blog at Discovery Falls.