I arrived at this small waterfall in New Hampshire the day after a strong storm had passed through
with high winds. In the aftermath of this storm, a lot of beech leaves had dropped into the pool of water below the falls. It was late in the afternoon when I got here, and getting fairly dark. But I knew my long exposure of about 3 seconds would lead to “Circular Motion” of the fallen leaves. It’s hard to pre-visualize how the swirling leaves will look, but I took a number of shots and was happy with how this one turned out.
What artistic feedback would you like if any?
Any critique or comments are welcome.
Pertinent technical details or techniques:
Canon 5D MKIV, Canon 24-70mm f2.8 lens, at 28mm, ISO 100, 3.2 sec at f11
You captured one heck of a circular pattern! Your shutter speed works really well, conveying quite the sense of motion. You quite nicely achieved your goal with this image.
Wow that’s a massive leave-swirl! You placed it nicely in the composition, where the lines in it nicely cooperate with the waterfall, especially on the right. A welcoming extra is that the longer shutterspeed did not blur the leaves on the trees.
Ed, I was waiting for this one and it is really dynamic! I agree this 3 second exposure was just right and the colors look spot on as well. The center clear eye of the swirl is intriguing as the viewer can see to the bottom of the pool.
Ed, This is an amazing find. When I opened the large version I noticed that there were several swirls within the massive swirl of leaves. I can see why you were happy with the end result. Beautifully done.
Gotta agree that is one awesome swirl of leaves! I’m guessing all of us at one time or another look for leaves floating in streams in order to capture movement like this… this - was a monster find! Like Alan mentions, I think the “eye” of the swirl revealing the stream bottom is a cool bonus to the scene.
While I think the big swirl, cascade and beautiful autumn scene up top kinda compete with each other - I can’t think of any other way you could have composed this any better. In fact, I think this is quite compelling and beautiful as captured and presented.
@Lon_Overacker@Harley_Goldman@Ed_Lowe@Alan_Kreyger@Ron_Jansen
Thanks for the comments everyone. I’ll admit that the composition is the not strongest. But that leaf swirl was so spectacular that I tried to get in as much of it as possible. Doing that created some negative space on the left, but i couldn’t bear to crop away the circular swirl in the LLC.
I returned to this same location the next day to shoot another section of the waterfalls in this location, and a lot of the leaves were already gone and the swirl was nowhere near as good. I think going there the first day right after a big wind storm made all the difference in the swirl.
Ed, I know that pool very well, and you captured a great swirl here. I love the shape of the swirl and that you can see down to the base of the pool.
Since no one else has said anything, maybe it’s just me, but the image feels very tilted clockwise. I know that it’s a strange downward angle, so it’s very difficult to know when it’s level, but it just feels off. I experimented with some rotations, but nothing seems to look right to me.
Thanks for the comments Craig. As you know, one has to stand on the top of a steep bank to shoot this falls, and that perspective may be what makes this look strange. I actually tried going into the pool to shoot, but found that the lower perspective made the swirls look less impressive, they looked better from above.
Because you got me thinking about a tilt, I decided to do a better check on this, and the grid-lines do look level where the water hits the pool, so it is pretty close to level. I think some optical illusion must be in play. The screen capture messed with the color space.
Really nice, Ed. The swirls within the swirl are great. If I had to make a small nit, the comp seems a little right heavy to me with the empty water on the left. Is this the little cascade to the left of the basin?
I would have loved to see the complete circle, part of it seemed cut off at the bottom. Maybe a smaller focal length could have helped. It would have helped emphasize the circularity of the flow. I’d also consider shaving off a little from the top – some of it is useful to establish the surroundings, but there may be a tad bit more space up top that’s not doing too much.
Mike, yes this is the little falls next to The Basin. Gaurav, I wanted to show the full circle, but it would have forced me into using such a wide focal length that I would have picked up major distractions both to the left and right. Also there was only a narrow angle of view and place to stand to get this shot. This was the best I could do with what I had to work with.
