Milky water is horrible, right?

For me it's all about the composition. If it's plonked on the third with a rock in the foreground and a national park in the background, meh me to sleep.

Quite like this one though.

(y)
 
Looks good to me.
Enough dynamic to show movement.
What I hate is the 30 seconds plus shots that make it look as if a blanket has been draped over it.
 
Thanks everyone.

I've been thinking about *why* one might want water unrealistically blurred in a more conventional photo, but that's a post for another time.
 
Exactly what is realistic water? If there were such thing surely we wouldn't have these discussions. The eye/brain system refreshes every (iirc) about every 20 milliseconds but is also scanning - so water taken at 1/50 doesn't look natural at all. Rather as with vegetation blowing in the wind, a camera can never record water as the eye/brain sees it; we have to accept that and choose our own interpretation.
 
choose our own interpretation
:agree:

But saying that this is a lovely shot, I think I prefer this speed for waterfalls, streams etc but prefer the milkier, smooth look for sea long exposure.
 
JohnFar said:
Exactly what is realistic water? If there were such thing surely we wouldn't have these discussions. The eye/brain system refreshes every (iirc) about every 20 milliseconds but is also scanning - so water taken at 1/50 doesn't look natural at all. Rather as with vegetation blowing in the wind, a camera can never record water as the eye/brain sees it; we have to accept that and choose our own interpretation.
Click to expand...

I planned to start a separate thread, but since we're here: this is realistically blurred water to me - its pretty much what this piece of stream looks like at the moment, as much as a still image can show:
Bowmans Bridge 4 by Toni Ertl, on Flickr

And this is how these waves looked to me when I watched:
Fuerteventura redux Waves-9168 by Toni Ertl, on Flickr

Making waves-9300 by Toni Ertl, on Flickr


But if I want to give a sense of movement to the business then I need to use blur given by a much longer shutter opening time:
Making waves-9434 by Toni Ertl, on Flickr


I'll quite often bracket exposure times for water to get something that looks right. Something else to consider is that water is in a different state from the land that interfaces with it, but because we use certain shutter speeds to capture it, very often it looks either no different or, if we only record a small amount of movement, it looks ugly like we just couldn't hold the camera still. For me - and I'm sure that I'm not alone in this - I want the fact that water is in a different physical state to the land around to be obvious, so it MUST look different or we might as well not include it in the photo. Our images should express *something* about the scene in front of us, and while it's possible to just click away making 'nice' images, there are far greater possibilities too.

Since we can't really capture water as it is - because it's moving and our eye beholds the movement as part of the scene - we should try to capture it in a way that brings something positive in the interpretation.

:)
 
When in motion, water tends to break into a number of droplets.

I prefer to see those droplets.

No.1 above is not the natural way the water looks, too "smooth" for me.
No.s 2 &3 are the way I prefer to see it, dynamic but with detail.
I'm undecided about the last one, but I tend to think it's just a little too blurred for my taste.
 
I'm on your side Brian;)
 
Brian G said:
When in motion, water tends to break into a number of droplets.

I prefer to see those droplets.

No.1 above is not the natural way the water looks, too "smooth" for me.
No.s 2 &3 are the way I prefer to see it, dynamic but with detail.
I'm undecided about the last one, but I tend to think it's just a little too blurred for my taste.
Click to expand...

Thanks Brian. The thing about number 1 (Bowmans bridge) is that the water is flowing smoothly but producing little ripples that the eye doesn't really take in, but which look ugly in a picture. There weren't any small droplets, but in order to make the water appear more real *in a way that complements the scene* then it needed to be smooth.

You can see from the first 2 wave pictures - both on my flickr feed - that I'm not at all averse to freezing the action, but sometimes there are good reasons not to do so.
 
I have to agree with Brian. But as I've said before, I'm someone who intensely dislikes milky, smoothed-out water, but I realize and accept that we all like different things, and so be it! If I see a smoothed-out water image in a magazine, I turn the page with hardly a glance. Sometimes I stop and study the image and think what a cracking shot this would be if there was detail in the water. Other viewers will say how wonderful it is! ......
That's my honest opinion. :)
 
This has been an interesting discussion and I appreciate the way people have handled it.

I think ultimately, it shows that we all have our own way of seeing things, which in itself brings variety to our photography.
Personally, I have no problem in seeing an instant in time when looking at a waterfall or fast flowing river, but it would appear not everyone "sees" in the same way.
Let me also say that I'm not totally against long exposure photography, and I must admit ownership of a 10-stop ND filter myself.
However, apart from "trying it out" I have never found any occasion on which I have wanted to use it.
The thing that I find irritating is the sheer number of long exposure "smooth water" photos that are around and that the authors somehow think think they are being "creative" to use such an overdone technique. I think it's a case of "Oh look, there's a bandwagon - lets all jump on it." and the first person to devise the technique has a lot to answer for.
I think long exposure water just for the sake of it, is a technique that has run its course, and it's time we moved on.
I'm not saying it doesn't have it's place, it's just that I'd prefer to see a little more variety, and realism, in our photos.
 
I reckon yours are about right Toni. A little blur is nice but usually not to the extent all detail or sense of movement is lost. For waterfalls there usually isn’t much need to go beyond a second but obviously depends on the scene. The thing is there are times you can do 30 second exposures and it works very well, maybe with autumn leaves swirling in a stream, but got to use your judgement and see what works rather than go for the default 2 minute exposure or whatever the mags shout about, probably because Lee are paying them to advertise their Big Stopper
 
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