Surreal Water & Sacrificing the Body

Slowing down your photography is usually used to suggest that time taken crafting an image, results in a better image. Slowing down can also refer to longer exposures. As I mentioned in my recent post, I had a pond staked out as a great winter photo opportunity; there are also several small streams coming through the beaver dam. While not your rushing cascade of white-water, there are opportunities for some long-exposure imagery of water tumbling over rocks and ice. Add in the simplifying character of a blanket of snow, and you have lots of great potential.

I always come back to two of my major influences: Younes Bounhar and Harry Nowell. Harry has been instrumental in helping me slow down and craft the shot. Younes’ contribution to this post is two-fold: shapes, form and simplification, in addition to ‘sacrifice the body’. Well, he didn’t exactly say that. He implied that if you are not willing to get wet, you are missing a lot of opportunity. As with the ladder on the iced pond in my last post, leaning over and perching across a winter brook, certainly qualify.

The pond and stream of these two posts, just on the Carp Ridge, outside Ottawa, Ontario, has provided several great opportunities to practise my craft, train the eye and risk the body. One thing it does not provide is sunrise and sunset photography: the surrounding wood is just too close and thick to let light through it, and during the height of the day, it is hard to get a long exposure without blowing out the image. While that might be your goal, mine was to blur water to such as degree that it didn’t even look like water. That requires a very long exposure. This first image here, was a 45-second exposure, while the second was a 3-minute exposure. To get these during the day, I had a thick overcast sky to help, as well as 8-stop and 2-stop neutral density (ND) filters. Add in the required tripod, some warm weather gear, a willingness to fall into the stream, and a supporting and understanding wife on standby with a warm car, and all that remains is something to photograph. That’s where taking the time comes in. I spent about 45 minutes looking at different angles, tromping through brush, sliding on icy stones, taking a few test snaps, then over the next 30 minutes, I only took 8 photos at two locations; mainly getting the exposure and focus right where I wanted them.

Next time you are out there, start to think  about what you might be missing by not getting in the stream, up the lamp post or on a ladder on a frozen beaver dam.