Shooting Waterfall

It was my first time to shoot waterfall since after I got serious about photography. I understand some basic now-how, as I have read several tips about it sometimes ago. Weather comes to play an important role in landscape photography, and it is no exception for waterfall photography. Sunny sky is not what you may prefer, especially when you want the milky flows of water that requires low light. This makes early morning or late evening the best times for a visit. Tripod is a must, though an extra burden. ND filter (which I cannot afford) can reduce more light for slower shutter speed.

Here are some shots I got from Khbal Spean waterfalls, also known as river of 1000 Lingas. It is 1,500m mountainous walk from the entrance to the river. The walk is scenic but tiresome especially the trip to the river.

A view of the road leading to the river. For your information, the entrance is closed by 15:00. I arrived there at 15:20, so I needed to work something out with the guard to get in.

My companion and I were the only souls when we arrived at the river. So I could have the whole place for myself.

With Reclining Buddha, Khbal Spean

Only after I came down that a guard told me there are more sculptures and waterfalls downstream. So what I saw was only a small part of the river. (;_;)

PS: Since the air nearby waterfall normally very damp, try to protect your camera and lens from getting wet as much as possible. Moisture is the main cause of lens fungus.

Bayon in HDR

I am not a big fan of HDR, partly because I have never been able to make any HRD that I considered good enough. The above HDR came from a single shot. I did some bracketing, but well I could not keep those geese stay still. That why I ended up using a single shot, adjusting its exposures for HDR processing. What a boring sky, by the way!!

Panning

In still photography, the panning technique is used to suggest fast motion, and bring out foreground from background. In photographic pictures it is usually noted by a foreground subject in action appearing still (i.e. a runner frozen in mid-stride) while the background is streaked and/or skewed in the apparently opposite direction of the subject’s travel. (Wikipedia)

I have learnt of this technique for quite sometimes, but I had never practiced it, not until last week when I had chances to pan children running at school.  Even my constant f/2.8 fast lens could not compensate the low light condition (children run under tree shades) and fast running. To some degree, I could freeze their action, but it was not sharp enough. Then I came up with the idea of panning. After a few trial shots, I started to love it. I panned at the speed of about 1/100 to 1/60 sec.

Chaos

When we see things in several seconds per frame, sometimes it may look confusing, or what Bryan Peterson describes as chaos. The traffic light at the intersection of Monivong Boulevard and Street 310 worked just perfectly at the time the below photo was taken, but here when we see it in 15 seconds per frame, the it appears the light is completely out of control.

No Ultra Wide Lens?

There is time when your lens is not wide enough to get the whole object as you want; neither the space is enough for feet zoom. That is time when stitching come to your rescue. With Adobe Photoshop CS 3’s photomerge and lens correction, you can leave the costly ultra wide lenses to persons with deep pockets. No wide lens? No worry!! All you need is some labor and time.

Original photos before stitching.

This can be done in about 5 minutes.