New eBook Release: The Perfect Shutter

I'm delighted and a more than a little excited to announce that my new eBook "The Perfect Shutter" has just been launched! Published by the wonderful team at Craft & Vision, the Perfect Shutter is a book about the creative use of shutter speeds in landscape photography. You can buy it on the C&V website by clicking this link.

It's been a number of years now since I first started experimenting with different shutter speeds to create different effects and moods in a photograph. Most often by the sea, but also by rivers and waterfalls, and occasionally sky and vegetation, I'm fascinated by how the passage of time - the 4th dimension - can play a part in an image. It seems strange that you can depict something you can neither see nor touch in a single still photograph, but there it is.

In the book I talk about the different tools and techniques for achieving different effects via shutter speed, with an overarching theme of using such knowledge intentionally to best realise your own vision. David duChemin describes the book as follows:

“I believe that every photograph has a ‘perfect shutter’—that magical sweet spot where the depiction of motion within the photograph best conveys the intended vision and emotion.” – Duncan Fawkes

I’m excited to introduce The Perfect Shutter from landscape photographer Duncan Fawkes. Duncan has a body of work that so impressed me that I was thrilled when he said he’d share his knowledge in an eBook for us.

In 180 big, beautiful spreads, Duncan shows you how to refine your vision by putting technique into practice, adding stronger mood and intention to your photographs by sharing his knowledge of the basic fundamentals, tools, gear, visualization, techniques, and subjects, before expanding into more advanced topics such as deciphering ND filter numbers, panning, intentional camera movement, and blending exposures. In his “Making the Image” section, Duncan includes 10 photographs that walk you through the how and the why of his personal choices in creating those images.

Whether you want to photograph silky waterfalls, energetic waves, the sky, or even the wind, The Perfect Shutter leads you to find your perfect place to creatively capture the landscape as you experience it. Nature renews itself every morning: reframe how you see it.

Download your copy before 11:59 PM (PST) on June 15 for just $6.00 (a 25% savings). Learn more.

For the Love of the Photograph, - David duChemin

If you'd like to read my book it is available from the Craft & Vision website. Better yet it's discounted from $8 to $6 (25% off) until June 15th, so go grab a bargain!

And if you're into bargain hunting they also have a bundle deal with the hugely talented Michael Fyre's Exposure (which I also have and recommend) for an additional 20% off - both books for only $8.80. You can get them both here.

Timed with the book release I sat down with Jeffery Saddoris to discuss my photography on the C&V podcast. If you're interested in hearing my thoughts (and a lot of umms and ahhs!) then you can listen to it here.

On a personal note, the release of this book is quite obviously a huge highlight for me. Not only does it represent years of work - and the usual cliches of blood, sweat and tears - but also it's a real honour to be featured by Craft & Vision. Regular readers will know how David duChemin through his blog, photography and Craft & Vision were instrumental on helping me onto the right path artistically at the start of my photographic journey. In a sense things have come full circle and I'm so very grateful to contribute back to C&V and its readers, of which I've been one all of these years. I'm very grateful to David and the team for the opportunity and their belief in me. I think the final product looks amazing and I'm very happy with it.

I am grateful to and humbled by those of you who have supported and encouraged me all these years. To have people interested and engaged with your work is truly one of the greatest gifts to an artist. I thank you.

 Buy it now for only $6.

Thoughts on Shutter Speed from Glen Sligachan

One of the things I've been developing over the last 6 or more months is a more creative approach to the use of shutter speed. Rather than a 'short' or 'long' binary switch, I like to consider shutter speed as an analog dial allowing us to dial up or down the degree of detail in the water to taste and to suit a particular shot. I particularly love the streaking that gives the water a sense of personality when using a mid-length shutter speed of 1 second plus or minus 2/3 second.

Though it suits some shots, I think full detail in the water often provides a confusing and distracting element in a frame. Conversely a very long shutter speed pushing the water exposure towards white for the 'silky water effect' removes any sense of character in the water, it just becomes white blobs in the frame. In between the two though there's the possibility of retaining some of that detail, that real sense of flow and undulation.

I often wonder why, when presented with raging torrents and stormy seas, we want to tame them into placid milky foam. In these elemental environments it is precisely the raw power and personality of the water that I want to capture. If it's a raging torrent, let it be so!

I thought I'd share an image from Glen Sligachan to show you what I mean.

Here's the first shot, looking towards Marsco down Glen Sligachan and the raging torrent that is Allt Dearg Mor (the one the footbridge crosses). Not a unique shot, indeed quite popular though most tend to shoot towards Sgurr nan Gillean and the Cuillin Ridge rather than Marsco, which I think is a particularly photogenic mountain. Still, I find it impossible to drive past Sligachan without stopping such is its beauty.

Already aware that I prefer to avoid very long shutter speeds these days, this shot was made at 1.6" at f/16 and ISO100. I had a polariser and a 3-stop neutral density filter on, the combination of which will block out between 4 and 5 stops of light. It's quite a nice shot I think, but when I look at the water it feels too placid. In particular, the white of the plunge pool holds very little detail and as a result interest. It's quite a large expanse of an image to be close to white and unsettles me.

Note that with other more gentle cascades you may find that 1.6" would retain reasonable detail in the plunge pool. Conversely with a large crashing waterfall, even 0.5" may record too much foamy movement in the plunge pool to keep any detail. The point here is that each time you encounter water you need to use some judgement and spend some time getting to know it to choose the perfect shutter speed. Each shot has a perfect shutter speed, but it's not fixed it's something you have to discover.

For the next image I've pulled out the 3-stop ND filter and I'm now using a 1/5th shutter speed. Note that in so doing I've nudged my polariser and there's a lot more glare on the rocks - oops! This is the main reason I often use a polariser around waterfalls.

Looking at the water itself there's a lot more detail in there and so to me sense of motion through the frame. Let's inspect more closely side-by-side.

The overall feel of the water in the shorter exposure is much more like what I would associate with a turbulent pool and a raging river. Observe that the exposure is still long enough that the detail has been 'smeared', so we don't have the full detail but rather the implication of detail.

Unfortunately the shorter exposure was just a tad under exposed, and the glare on the rocks from that nudge on the polariser means I'm not fully happy with this frame as is. Instead I take both exposures into Photoshop as separate layers (in Lightroom, select both, right click, "Edit In", "Open as Layers In Photoshop") and I use a layer mask to 'paint in' the more detailed water. You may also note that I've dialed down the opacity of the layer with the water exposure to 53% to reduce the extent of the detail in the final frame. Actually having a separate exposure like this allows me to dial the detail up and down as suits my taste back in the studio.

There's a few more tweaks I've made elsewhere in the image to result in the final image below. Some may prefer the original, smoother version but I much prefer this more turbulent rendition of Allt Dearg Mor and Glen Sligachan; for me it better suits its wild feeling location.

Making the Image: Waterfall, Rydal

This is the first post in my new "Making the Image" series where I walk you through one of my images, how I approached and refined the shot as I "worked the scene".

One of the difficulties I found as a starting photographer was trying to understand why my photographs looked so different to the "professionals". It seemed like they just rocked up, took a magical shot and moved on.

There are a lot of instructional photography books talking about some of the ingredients to successful images (good light, composition, etc) but they are almost always illustrated with a "final shot" demonstrating the point under discussion but never the often messy, organic process that was used to get to that image. As such I don't think you quite "get in the head" of the photographer, what their process was like (and how messy it could be) and dispell the myth that it's possible to just pitch up and shoot gold. Indeed it seems to amplify that myth and that if you apply certain rules then you too can just turn up and create a magical shot.

I've decided to create this "Making the Image" series to provide that resource which I felt was missing. The intention is to show how I work and that shooting lots of - intentional - images is an ok, natural and perhaps even neccessary way to work. The key word here is "I". Others, including yourself, will approach their work differently. There's no correct way so equally - within reason - there's no incorrect way.

I think a lot of the time the thing that stands "successful" photos apart from "unsuccessful" photos is that the unsuccessful ones didn't go far enough in trying to uncover the essence of what interested them. It takes time spent exploring, observing and thinking to boil down the raw elements of the scene to a successful image. This is reflected in the phrase "working the scene". It's unlikely - though I've certainly done it - where your best image is your first one. It's more likely to be one of the later ones as you refine the shot and distill it down to its core. So if nothing else, keep exploring and shooting.

I hope you find this series useful in a way that I feel I would have starting out.

Waterfall, Rydal

The featured image I talk about below was shot a couple of weeks ago during a family holiday in the Lake District. My intention on this particular morning was to shoot Rydal Water which had a few days earlier been clad in mist, so I was hoping for similar conditions. One thing I do when I go away is pore over maps looking for potentially interesting features. As you can see from many of the images on this site, when I see the word "waterfall" I get particularly excited. You can't see the text on the 50k map below, but "Fall" is marked on my 25k map near to the White Moss car park between Rydal and Grasmere where I would be parking for Rydal Water. I decided I would check it out on the way back to the car.

[osmap width=400 height=400 markers="NY 34933 06637;Waterfall"]

The fall is pretty much opposite the car park and is at most 100 yards from the roadside up a track.

Lay of the Land

Upon reaching the fall, you'll see that it cascades into quite a wide ghyll (or gully, or ravine) with a bank a couple of meters high. The ghyll is also quite long and straight, so the waterfall is visible some distance down the ghyll. This is generally unusual for waterfalls. I usually find that you suddenly come upon them and then have little room to work in.

Also presumably because the ghyll was quite wide the water was not very deep, literally centimetres, so you can move around quite freely. This adds up to a good location to try out some different compositions unhindered. The ghyll floor is littered with rocks none of which leap out to me as useful foreground material, it strikes me as disappointingly messing.

(for future posts I'll make a note to take a wide shot of the location to help explain the scene a bit better)

It was still early in the morning (just before 7am) and the weather was rather grey which meant I had nice soft light.

I scrambled down the steep bank, and set to work.

Making the Image

I made 35 images in the ghyll which you can see in this contact sheet from Lightroom (click the thumbnail for a larger image). There are actually 36 images in the contact sheet as #35 is a post-processed TIF.

When I approach a scene I like to start from further away and work my way, in getting closer as I become more intimate with it.

The first few images (#1-4 in the contact sheet) were shot quite far down the ravine using my 135mm lens. Most of my watefall shots are right in close to the foreground, so I was interested in shooting with a longer lens for a different aesthetic.

In this first image (#1) I'm just checking for exposure and setting up an initial composition, using a long exposure to create the "silky water effect". I talk about the details in my Guide to Long Exposure post. It's pretty dark down here so I'm able to get a long exposure without an ND filter at f16 and ISO100. Although I could get the silky effect with a second or two exposure, I prefer a bit longer as it creates a more pleasing look where the waterfall splashes into the pool.

The initial 10" exposure is just a touch too much so the water is too close to burning out for my liking. I back it off to 6". I can't recall if I was in manual or aperture priority. I normally shoot in Av, but recently when the light is unchanging - as it was down here - I find myself using M more often. With Manual I don't have my exposures changing from one frame to the next as the composition and hence metering changes.

The composition is too central, top-to-bottom for my liking with wasted space either side. In the next couple of frames, while adjusting my exposure, I'm moving the waterfall to the left of frame such that the "flow" of the image is from top left to bottom right which is more natural feeling.

I arrived at the final image in this series pretty quickly as at this focal length composition options were somewhat limited. You can see the strewn rocks at the foot of the fall which I was trying to minimise in the shot. Though not a favourite, I quite like this shot (#4). I like its straightforward simplicity.

I feel it's time to get closer to the fall now. I'm looking for something in the foreground to anchor the shot and give it some depth. I come across this rock (#5) larger than the rest and have a look to see if it gives me that. My exposure settings are similar and I've switched to my 35mm lens.

I don't really love this rock. It's a pretty boring rock and I realise pretty quickly I'm trying to make something that just isn't there, and the rocky mess leading to the fall isn't going to make the image I'm looking for. The various fallen tree trunks and branches add to the visual clutter.

So I decide I need to move quite close in. I remove a couple of fallen branches from the pool at the foot of the fall which are adding to the visual mess.

The next series of shots (#8-13) are pretty enough. I like the rock angling from top left to bottom right leading to the fall, which then comes back slightly against that line (#8). I'm not liking the high contrast of the trees and sky above the fall, it's a bright patch leading the eye out of frame. I'm thinking I could crop to say 5x4 which I like but I'm aware that as well as losing the sky I'll lose everything (or rather, what little I have!) in front of the fall leaving me with a pretty dull picture of just a waterfall.

I try dropping the lens to get rid of the sky (#10). This brings in more of the visual clutter on the floor. I'm then also becoming more conscious that I don't have to get excited about in my foreground.

If I get lower, and try to retain the full waterfall I'm almost certain to get some bright sky and trees coming back into the top of the frame. Further, I'm still a wee bit away from the fall so even if I've got a foreground I still have distracting rocks in the midground. At this point I've decided I want to get really close, switching to my favoured Zeiss 21mm.

I know I want to approach the fall from the side to give a more dynamic composition. There's little of interest on the left where most of the water is flowing. There's some semi-interesting stuff to the right so I set-up low (2nd lowest setting on my tripod, about 60cm off the ground) and decide to cut-off the top of the fall (I don't want the sky coming in, and it keeps the frame more intimate. #14-17).

Ok at this point I'm starting to see the orange in the foreground rock (#14). It had completely escaped my attention before but now it's winking at me like a piece of gold in the pan! I mess around with some ND grads to darken the fall relative to the rocks so I can brighten my foreground but I'm just not happy with my composition. I like the orange rock, it's just not big enough - it looks like it's fallen into frame rather than me putting it there. Time to get closer and lower (#18-28).

Things are starting to get tricky at this point. As you'll see in this image (#28) from later in the series, I've got a rock slab that forms the right flank of the waterfall just to the side of my foreground orange rock. I have no way to splay my tripod legs without one of them going down the side of the orange rock and into frame. Hmm.

I decide to fold turn my tripod horizontal, fold down one leg, keep the other two splayed to stop the 'pod rolling forwards and backwards, and rest the ballhead on a rock sitting right next to the rock slab. I rotate the ballhead back into the vertical position and I'm all set. A little bit unconventional but it seems to work .

At this point the camera is nearly in the water which means I'm kneeling down in the water myself trying to perfect the composition. I shoot off a number of identical frames, wiping my filters in between shots to remove spray from the waterfall.

These exposures are all 8" @ f16, ISO100. I would probably prefer to be at f11 for sharpness, but I'm very close to that rock and not very able to review my images on the LCD so I opt for the wider depth of field over absolute sharpness for safety.There's some weird white glare in #18-19 that I notice and adjust me composition to remove it.

Mid-way through I kick my tripod legs (doh!) knackering my composition but fortunately not my kit. Setting it back up I end up with my final composition (images #29-36). Fortunately I also spot the pronged twig sitting between the two rocks in the middle of the pool and remove it. However I haven't seen the leaf lurking in the water front of frame.

Again I shoot several frames to avoid the "spray of doom". I don't think I can improve on the composition (#35), I'm confident I've got enough frames to have avoided water drops and my belly is rumbling - it's 07:46 and time to go home!

At Home

Reviewing the images at home, I quickly move through the series remembering the various adjustments I was making. There's some shots I quite like, there are others where I can't quite fathom what I've done or why, but when I get to my final image (#35) I'm very happy. And then I see the leaf in the water...

The other thing that bothers me is that I still have some white glare on the water in the bottom corner. I'm fortunate that I have enough room to left and bottom of frame to be able to crop both of these out, though this pushes the left hand rock slightly too close to the frame for my liking. There's also the big white splash of water at the top that is distracting so I choose to remove that too. I still have to do a little cloning to remove the leaf's stalk.

My aim here is to talk more about the fieldwork than the post-processing. But for completeness I've made fairly usual adustments in Lightroom (exposure tweaking, contrast, WB, bit of clarity and vibrance) and added a slight vignette.

I've then taken it into Nik Color Efex Pro 4 which I'm a big fan of. I can't remember the exact recipe but it probably involved Polarizer, Pro Contrast, Brighten Center/Darken Border (making my prior vignette addition a bit silly!) and maybe some Detail Extractor on the rocks. I like the added punch, reduced glare on the rocks and extra saturation in my final image (#35) which I'm very happy with.

There you have it, from car park to processed.

I hope that you found this post interesting, better yet helpful. I tried to make the writing as "train of thought" as possible to try to recreate being there, but appreciate that this may be annoying or rambling. This post took quite a bit of thinking and effort, so more than any of my other posts I'd be very grateful for your feedback in the comments to know if they are worthwhile repeating in the future or how you think it could be improved upon. Thanks!

Whirlpool

Taken in Padley Gorge, Peak District. All of my images are available for purchase. Please see the "Prints" menu option above.

Copyright © Duncan Fawkes 2012

Location Guide: Middle Black Clough Waterfall

This is a short location guide to one of my favourite parts of the Peak District.

This is a little gem of a location. Located at the end of the Longdendale Valley, it's a secluded spot that millions pass by each year without realising it as they travel along the busy A628 Woodhead road.

The River Etherow starts at the head of the Longdendale Valley, which has been flooded to create 5 reservoirs. Not long into it's journey the Etherow is met by the stream coming from Black Clough. I'm never quite sure what you call this stream! I believe clough means gorge or ravine, but don't know what the stream running down the bottom of a clough is called. So I'll just call it a clough too!

There are actually three Black Cloughs - Near, Far and Middle. It is Middle Black Clough which is home to an impressive 10m waterfall. There is a lovely walk by the side of the clough through the trees leading to the waterfall. Note that you need to cross the river to get to the waterfall, so wear suitable footwear and use caution - especially after heavy rainfall when the river may be impassable.

How to get there

Middle Black Clough is just off the A628(T) Woodhead Road. On the map at the bottom you'll see a P for the car park. There is a short road leading down to the car park from the A628, next to the entrance of the Woodhead Tunnel.

Once you're parked, head over the bridge and then cross the stile immediately on your left. Follow this path until it takes a turn to the right at the junction of the Etherow and Black Clough. As you continue on the path you'll see a ford across the river, but keep on the same path with the stream on your left. Shortly after entering the trees you will see another stream emerging from the far side - this is Far Black Clough.

You'll soon come to the remains of some shooting cabins in a wide open area. Stay on the path until it takes a steep turn up the hillside. At this point you will see a cascade in front of you, and a small island in the stream. With great care, cross the stream using the various boulders as stepping stones.

Once on the other side, a path to the right should become obvious. Follow this keeping the stream to your right until you come to another river junction - this is where Near (on the right) and Middle (on the left) Black Clough meet. Keep to the path with the river on the right. There will be several largish boulders that you have to scramble across but the path should be obvious enough. It won't be long until you can see and hear the waterfall.

It takes about 20 minutes to get there from the car park.

What to shoot

On the walk there are some lovely rocks in the stream which I find interesting subjects in their own right. With the overhanging trees there are many classic "stream with green trees" shots to be had. Also keep an eye out for foam in the water, particularly after rainfall. This can create some interesting swirls in a long exposure. You can spend an hour or two working this stretch of river without ever crossing the river to get to the waterfall.

Once on the other side I think there are some lovely rocks in Middle Black Clough that are also worth exploring, though by this point the allure of the waterfall is strong!

Then there is the waterfall itself, which is quite a scene! As you might expect, there are steep sides all around the waterfall and you're working in quite a small area. Assuming there hasn't been too much rain you should be able to cross the stream to shoot both sides of the fall. I find the far side more pleasing with the curve of the moss covered rocks leading the eye round to the waterfall (as seen in the topmost image). Given the tight spaces, you're likely going to want quite a wide lens (17mm or 21mm) if you want to get most of the waterfall in.

Map

[osmap markers="SK1161899023;Middle Black Clough Waterfall"]