![]() ![]() It’s one thing to venture onto a lake, but when there is moving water involved, it’s another story. When it comes down to ice conditions in a situation like this, don’t do it. You are putting yourself at risk, along with anyone else that may try to rescue you. ![]() The people that walked on the ice were just crazy. It is not safe for you to go down there, even if you are just planning on staying on the paved trails. Notice you don’t see a picture behind the falls? That’s because it’s illegal. Those that venture in are rewarded with a view of an ice cave. This is when people venture out onto the ice, of unknown thickness and make their way through an opening in the wall of ice. Then going down a set of icy stairs that are not maintained at all in winter or scale down the snowy side of the riverbanks’ walls. To get down to the falls, you have to climb over a barricade that looks like a mangled fence. They have barricades up and no trespassing signs all over the place. Then it came swirling back by, where I could grab it, now sopping wet, but a good omen of luck within my reach.As a warning, going to the base of the frozen falls is illegal, and even worse, behind the frozen falls. In the middle of all this my faithful fedora blew off into the stream and up into the pool above me. In the end the image seemed more appropriate to this starkly beautiful land, so raw and new, so of the moment. Held still in space, the water suggested something I knew was impossible: transparent lava. So I kept exploring the nuances, moving closer to the side of the waterfall, able to get within mere inches of the water (without drowning my Nikon D3), seeing how getting lower put the glasslike water up against the azure sky. It was the act of photography that revealed the possibilities. In this case that was 1/2500 of a second, which turned the sparkling water into crystallized glass, full of dazzling shapes and totally unexpected textures. I decided to try totally freezing the water with a very high shutter speed. So I went to the opposite extreme, which is often the most refreshing way out of a creative trap. Besides not having the gear to take that picture, I wanted something else. It was not about serenity and peacefulness, which the usual silky-water picture would have implied. This waterfall, this setting on the coast of Iceland, was all about bracing clarity, energy, and the freshness of the moment. That meant I couldn’t fall back on my old tricks and would have to try something new.īut there was more than mere necessity at work here. Well, I didn’t have either an ND filter or my tripod along, which-as it turned out-was a very good thing. (Oh, and it should go without saying, you’ll need your tripod or a very conveniently placed rock to set your camera on.) This is where you need to have a good, strong neutral density (ND) filter, which will cut out enough light to make the long exposure time possible. You can crank the f-stop all the way down, use the lowest ISO your camera can manage, and still not get there. The trick is getting that long shutter speed in broad daylight. The water in motion blurs to become as smooth as glass. You simply use a slow shutter speed, usually a half a second or longer, maybe up to as long as 30 seconds. The method is simple, even if accomplishing it takes a bit of gear. It's just that the style has been done over and over by countless photographers. The most common current rage is to use a long, very slow shutter speed to turn the water into silky, silvery curtains of liquid smoothness. the techniques used to capture waterfall pictures have become standard fare. I say "close" because I doubt we humans will ever lose our fascination with the delights of cascading water plunging dramatically from on high. Waterfall pictures are moving perilously close to being clichés. With a couple of minutes to spare, perhaps I could pull off one more image.įirst, a bit of photographic background. Nothing huge, just crystal clear waters sweeping past the ancient farm and dancing down over the rocks to the sea. Then I remembered the cascading waterfall near our landing site. ![]() If I could break through that creative barrier, what other challenges would succumb to me? Somehow that’s how I felt dashing back to the Zodiacs to leave Thistle Fjord in Iceland, flush with confidence from my photographic encounter with the bird wing. Perhaps unlocking one creative door opens another. His photos appear frequently in National Geographic magazine. Contributing editor Jim Richardson is a photojournalist recognized for his explorations of small-town life. ![]()
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