Shooting waterfalls

Ever since I saw a YouTube video of Karl Taylor demonstrating the effect of slow shutter speeds on moving water, I am trying to find waterfalls and stuff like that. But since I am living in the Netherlands (not at the sea side), that's easier said than done.

T: 1/800 sec (Fast shutter speed, and it's a bit dark)

So I was pretty happy when we went for a small weekend-vacation to CenterParcs (only 25 minutes of driving from our home), where they seemed to have a few nice waterfalls to my surprise. Of course they were small, and man-made, but hey: good enough to do some experiments and take some nice photo's.

T: 4 sec (Slow shutter speed)

The beautiful thing about moving water is that you can 'freeze' it with your camera, using a fast shutter speed. But when you use a slow shutter speed, the water turns into 'mist', and with this effect some really nice images can be
created.

All photo's in this blog show the same waterfall which was the nicest around, and indoors. The first image of this blog was shot with a fast shutter speed of 1/800 sec. The water in this photo seems, more or less, frozen in time. All the drops that are falling down are visible.

The second photo was shot using a slow shutter speed of 4 sec. This time the moving water is blurred out and seems to have a mist-like quality. Personally this is my favourite way of shooting water.

I moved the camera around a bit, used the zoom lens, and made some more experimental shots. Here are some of my favourites. The first one is just to show what it looks like with a fast shutter speed:

T: 1/100 sec (fast shutter speed, but should have been even faster)

Same position, T: 4 sec, nice :-)

This is my favourite waterfall photo of that day. T: 5 sec