Cascade Falls take 2

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Last Wednesday, in honor of #waterfallwednesday, I posted an image of Cascade Falls and some info on the location…a local picnic and photo-op spot since, well, since before there were cameras. That image was all about the rush and tumble, the splash and splatter, the raw energy of the falling water.

This is the alternative view, taken on a tripod with the Samsung Smart Camera WB800F’s waterfall mode, which takes a very long exposure (30 seconds or more) to blur the water to silk. This kind of shot generally involves neutral density filters on a DSLR, but the Samsung manages it all it’s own, using some kind of digital trickery to slow the shutter without burning out the highlights. 🙂

You are either a fan of the silky water effect or you are not. Anyone who has ever stood in front of a waterfall knows that the effect is purely a photographic artifact. Falling water just does not look like that. Still, the effect is so common in waterfall shots that some people apparently think that water can actually do that. I have mixed feelings. I can appreciate the beauty and the sense of peace that the silky water images capture and project…but I am under no illusions that they are real. They use a photographic technique to produce a mood that is simply not there, as a painter might. And that’s okay, I think. And they have a certain nostalgia to them…I mean, back in the days of slow film emulsions and 8×10 view cameras, any photograph of a waterfall in anything but full sun produced silky water. It was simply all the medium was capable of. Not so today. Silky water is now an artistic choice. And I think, at least on occasioin, a valid one.

Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.

One Comment

  1. Reply
    Donna Stannard Camp October 23, 2013

    Interesting observation that people either hate or love the silky waterfall effect….

    How about posting the same scene without the silky effect so we can compare them….

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