Water like honey or silk

You might remember I'd tried some film long exposure photos a couple weeks ago, here. One of the common long exposure photo effects is to turn running water into milk. That's mostly not something I'm interested in. My tastes run more toward a fog flowing over rocks effect, or getting interesting reflections or textures in the water. 

That's the result here. I was actually doing two experiments at once. One was simply the long exposure film experiment of water flowing over rocks in Fish Creek. The other was trying a phone app called Viewfinder. It turns your phone camera into a combination view finder and light meter, but it's better than that. It also calculates the exposure times for whatever ND filter you put on your camera, up to 10 stops, and lets you take notes, and keeps the meta data! It was only 4 or 5 dollars, and I figured it would be worth a try.

I'm quite pleased with the app. It took a bit of back and forth to set it up for my GW690 and figure out some of the subtleties of the light meter. I'm still not convinced I've got it totally nailed down, but it mostly agreed with the light meter I've been using, and the resulting calculations required. I only had to make the slightest exposure corrections in NegativeLapPro and Lightroom, which could be called personal taste rather than getting a perfect exposure, so it's close enough. I'll have to get out and do more long exposure photography, of course!

Part of the trick of capturing water flowing over rocks at this time of year is finding liquid water. A couple spots I had in mind were still frozen over, so I'll have to remember to visit them later in the year.

Here's the the photos that worked best from this roll.

1. I was a bit worried when metering that the tops of the rocks would be over exposed, and the water would be solid black. All these exposures were about 2 minutes.

2. The best of the bunch from a composition, and flowing effect, I think. I had to use a gradient filter to bring down the brightness on the right side a bit, and sure enough, some of the detail came back.

3. This one was fun. I've got two slightly different versions, trying to balance the light on the snow, and the dark water. The flowing water effect doesn't show up as well as I had hoped, but the reflections are nice.

4. I'm showing off a bit here. This had no real need to be a long exposure photo. The water is fairly calm in that pool, but what this does is clarify the reflections a bit. They came out better than I had hoped. This was a tricky scene to meter with all that bright snow on the left, and shadows on the right.

5. One photo left on the roll, and not wanting to walk too far. I saw the little log in the middle of the scene and as I was thinking about the water ripples, that little cross-wise stick arrived. I watched it balance, slowly moving back and forth. Quickly set up and click, wondering how the slow motion would be captured and if any of the foamy bubbles floating downstream would be captured as streaks. No and no. But the water texture here! Love it! Now if only I could figure out what was causing that highlight pentagram in the top centre. I've seen it before in some photos, and it might simply be a function of that lens pointed into the sun or bright light.