So a couple of weeks ago I visited a nearby brook (Nashoba Brook in Acton, MA) because “we” wanted a photo of the tributary for an invitation to a party in October.
When photographing water, and you are “in it” you have to decide if you want waves to be a part of the photograph. And you have to decide pretty well in advance because it’s a whole lot easier to add waves to a scene than to remove them. (All of this assumes Mother Nature isn’t doing her normal job of making your life miserable and popping up a gentle breeze just as you line things up. Not to worry, if there’s no breeze you can count on a cloud appearing to take away the light.)
When I’m in a kayak I’m forced to look quite a ways ahead to anticipate a photograph because once I arrive there the water is disturbed, pretty much for good. (A short aside: In John Szarkowski’s book “Looking At Photographs”, he shows a photo on page 45 by Henry Hamilton Bennett entitled “Sugar Bowl with Rowboat”, circa 1889. It shows a fellow in a rowboat, on the water, with a perfect reflection of the boat and surrounds. Szarkowski talks about the spatial ambiguity and multiple planes. I looked at it and said “How the hell do you have a person in a boat, on the water, and no waves?!” I still have no idea how that 120+ year old image was made short of nailing the oars and putting a scarecrow in the seat.)
Where was I, oh yes, Nashoba Brook. I waded into the brook to set up a shot from low on the water but no matter how careful I was my movements were dutifully recorded by the water’s surface and transmitted upstream.
I don’t own a remote, but I do have the overpriced Canon remote control with the intervalometer thingy. So I set it to take a picture every minute, carefully waded out of the stream, and picked up my other camera to amuse myself for a while.
There’s just something about leaving all that equipment sitting in the middle of a flowing stream (relatively slowly, but moving nonetheless) that’s a bit like sending your first kid off to kindergarten.
But several minutes later the desired effect was achieved. Whether it is a better photo than the one with the disturbed surface is a matter of taste, but it was nice to have both of them for future projects.
