Flowing water long exposures

[CaraRose]

These four are Alberta falls and the Alberta Falls trail in Rocky Mountain National Park.

I'm curious, how do most people deal with the contrast when you have dark rock and white water from the waterfalls? I feel like a lot of my long exposure waterfalls ended up with the water fall itself being somewhat over exposed.

I'm especially curious about the two middle ones-- does the effect work? Or should I have gone for a faster shutter speed? The water was extremely fast moving, but I worry if it becomes a bit too strange when the water turns to pure white like that.

The last one I like the water flow, but I think the picture itself is just too dull color wise.

Opinions are welcome! I'm trying my darndest to get better with flowing water shots.

[Janie]

These four are Alberta falls and the Alberta Falls trail in Rocky Mountain National Park.

I'm curious, how do most people deal with the contrast when you have dark rock and white water from the waterfalls? I feel like a lot of my long exposure waterfalls ended up with the water fall itself being somewhat over exposed.

I'm especially curious about the two middle ones-- does the effect work? Or should I have gone for a faster shutter speed? The water was extremely fast moving, but I worry if it becomes a bit too strange when the water turns to pure white like that.

The last one I like the water flow, but I think the picture itself is just too dull color wise.

Opinions are welcome! I'm trying my darndest to get better with flowing water shots.

I used a circular polarizer with the slow shutter, give that a shot - here's my results with that:

[mjs1973]

Cara, looks like you had a lot more water flowing than I did when I was there in April! We had to hike on top of about 2 feet of snow to get to the falls. As for the pics, I would say that the middle two are def. overexposed. You have lost all detail in the water in the lower left corner of the shot. As for the contrast of the light water, and dark rocks... not sure what to tell you there. A graduated ND filter helps in some situations, not sure they would do you much good here tho. You could always try taking two shots and combining them later if you want. I guess my biggest suggestion would be to bracket your exposures. The latitude with digital is only about 5 stops, and I find that highlights get blown out pretty easily with digital. One of the limitations we have to learn to work around for now I guess.

I don't think the colors in your last shot are too bad. Perhaps a polarizer would have punched them up a bit, but I don't think it's needed all that much. This is my favorite out of the 4 you have here. Keep at it!

[readingr]

CaraRose

Okay bear in mind this is my opinion and just that

I don't get this slow shutter speeds in some of the waterfalls which have lots of water. It is my opinion that some of these would have been better with a faster shutter speed to capture the power and not to smooth it out as you have done here. The problem is you've lost all the spray the water throws up at this speed.

I wish I could find a waterfall in the south of England to go an photo - must go back to Wales so that I can photograph some.

I think 1,2, and 3 would be better with the higher shutter speed but 4 is fine with the slow shutter speed.

I agree with Janie I use a linear polariser a lot on the boat purely to get the light levels down and sometimes have to combine that with the ND filter in the camera (digital) to get down to a reasonable level. By the way with the Canon Powershot Pro 1 the linear works fine which save a bucket full of money.

[CaraRose]

Cara, looks like you had a lot more water flowing than I did when I was there in April! We had to hike on top of about 2 feet of snow to get to the falls. As for the pics, I would say that the middle two are def. overexposed. You have lost all detail in the water in the lower left corner of the shot. As for the contrast of the light water, and dark rocks... not sure what to tell you there. A graduated ND filter helps in some situations, not sure they would do you much good here tho. You could always try taking two shots and combining them later if you want. I guess my biggest suggestion would be to bracket your exposures. The latitude with digital is only about 5 stops, and I find that highlights get blown out pretty easily with digital. One of the limitations we have to learn to work around for now I guess.

Thanks Michael (and everyone else who replied! ).

I'm curious with the bracketing-- what would you suggest for the best bracketing method? When I took photography back in high school, they taught us to take three shots-- bracket 1 stop up and 1 stop down from metered exposure. I've found that this often doesn't make much difference in the end. Those middle shots are a good example, one was what my meter said was exposed properly, one is one stop over. I also took another one that was one stop down. In all of them, I still have the blown highlights and the overexposed water. Should I be bracketing with 5 pictures instead? -2 stops, -1 stop, 0, +1, +2?

Thanks again