Framing Waterfalls 

A Gitzo Story by Aurelie Gonin

Water is perhaps one of the most obvious manifestations of nature's power and beauty. Rivers plunge into cascades, which creates sumptuous landscapes. When photographing these waterfalls, you want to emphasize the movement of the water. To achieve this, it's interesting to play with exposure speed.

If you capture the waterfall at a very high speed, say 1/1000 of a second, you'll freeze the drops of water in flight. On the other hand, if you go down to a much slower speed, you'll be able to draw the path of the water and show its movements and swirls. This generally creates a more impressive effect.

To achieve this, it's essential to have two accessories: a tripod, so you don't move while shooting at low speed, and a neutral filter, so you can expose the sensor for longer without overexposing the image. Indeed, even if you reduce the ISO sensitivity to the maximum, often to ISO 64 or 100, and close the diaphragm as far as possible, to a value of 16 or 32, you can't go down to speeds close to one second without getting too much light and creating an overexposed photo, as the waterfalls are outdoors in very bright environments.

By adding a neutral filter (ND32 or ND64), you can reduce the amount of light entering the lens and use slower shutter speeds. Of course, you'll need to work with manual settings to be able to control the visual appearance.