We had a beautiful sunny day here over the weekend (actually two sunny days, but I was traveling to/from Maine for most of one of them) and I wanted to continue working on a set of river abstracts that I started before the heavens opened up and flooded the river. The waters are working their way back to normal, but still have a lot of punch. I was working on long exposures like this:
when I spotted a kayaker playing in the rapids upstream of a nearby bridge. He (or she) would be passing by within a few minutes so what to do? I was shooting with the 40D and the 100-400 f/5.6L because I needed a lot of reach for some subjects. It would only take a few seconds to reconfigure the camera to shoot action shots (crank the shutter, raise the ISO, and set the lens wide open). I started to do this and stopped. I’m shooting abstracts. Can’t I make the kayaker an abstract subject too (if a fleeting one)? What the heck…
And so as he shot the rapids and played with the eddys I framed up and fired away at 0.6 and 0.8 seconds. I really didn’t have much time to see if this would work — the whole encounter only lasted 20 seconds. The results were interesting and, for me, added another dimension to this exploration of water’s power. In retrospect I should have varied the shutter a bit more as I think there would be some cool images below 0.5 seconds.
Technical: Canon 40D, 100-400 f/4.5L (at focal lengths through the entire range), f/16, ISO 200. Polarizer and a 3-stop ND filter. Shot from a Gitzo tripod and a Really Right Stuff RH-55 ballhead for stability.
Lightroom processing: strong fill, blackpoint, and clarity. Bit of vibrance. Removed one nasty dust spot.
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by Dave
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