Drought (1st May)

I really enjoyed doing this exercise. I had thought about possible subject matter for a few days, most of which was outside, but it had been pouring with rain for several days. I initially thought about going to the M3 motorway and then remembered the waterfall at Virginia Water. This afternoon the rain finally stopped and the sun appeared so I dashed over to the park. It turned out to be a good decision because the waterfall was far more boisterous than I had ever seen it before. The floodwater was obviously coming down from across the lakes. There were very few people in the park and I was able to set my tripod up and get almost solitary access to the space. I had seen incredibly beautiful shots of water taken by other people and I wanted to see how it was done.

I knew this meant slowing down the shutter speed, but found that with my first frames all this produced were some badly overexposed images. Following the rain the sun was now quite bright. I went as slow as the camera would allow adjusting the shutter speed manually but the problem remained and I was a bit flummoxed. Then I remembered what was once known as film speed and wondered what ISO setting I was using. As I suspected I had it on a relatively high ISO and once this was reduced I was able to slow down the shutter speed and start to achieve the motion blur I was looking for.

This was one of those instances where looking through the viewfinder was not enough, I needed to know how the camera worked in order to get close to what I wanted to take. Although I think there were a couple of overexposed spots where the sunlight was hitting the top of the waterfall I was pleased with the motion blur shots, they turn the water almost into fabric, like a veil sitting over the rocks. I think this is something I will come back to in future in terms of thinking about photographing movement.