Waterfalls is just one kind of moving water. Another one is ocean waves breaking on the coast.
Here are two photos at the same location – Rialto Beach in Olympic National Park. I like both of them. Each in its own way.
I like the first one for the wave breaking on the rock:
The second one for the nice S-curve that curves around the rock and leads to sea-stacks:
Which one do you like better?
I love moving water for an infinite number of shapes it can take. I can spend minutes, hours in one place photographing moving water and getting a new image every time.
Consider the following photos as an example of what I’m talking about. All of them were taken at The Lost Coast at around the same time of day at the same place.
Here the water is in a shape of a bird:
The one in a shape of a vortex:
And the one in a shape of a mountain:
That’s interesting how sometimes we underestimate the changes that happen around us.
A while ago I took this photo near Reflection Lake at Mount Rainier. It is not as good technically as I’d like, or at least not up to my current more experienced standards of execution. But now nothing like this can be done.
This year I went to this spot again and found that the road near the lake has been widened and rocks have been places on a side of the road close to the lake and the place where this photo was taken was gone.
Suddenly not very original photo turned into the one that cannot be repeated again. Life is a curious thing.
By Reflection Lake
Long time ago I photographed waterfalls from a side to keep myself and equipment away from the water. One thing that I’ve started doing this year is working into water and photographing waterfalls from where the water flows.
Being in the water makes experience much more vivid. I can be more intimate with a waterfall; look at it face-to-face; take a photo of waterfall with water coming onto me. I hope it gives my photographs that intimate look.
Of cause, I have a special boots to keep my feet warm in freezing water. The boots themselves are kind of interesting development of a human mind in itself. Rather than fighting the water trying to keep your feet dry they let the water in and that water seals the boots. The little amount of water that got in is quickly warmed up by your body and the feet stay warm and cozy.
It sounds so much like what photographers do – letting the world around to sink into them and then lock it in with a camera.
Spring Spring (Homestead Creek)
I used to be in love with waterfalls ages ago. Then for some reason I stopped photographing them. Maybe I photographed too many of them. Maybe because in area I live in they are very common and photographing them was a cliché. Or maybe I stopped seeing anything new in them.
I don’t know if it is a mere coincidence but after visiting Death Valley – one of the driest places on the Earth – last spring I fell in love for the second time with waterfalls and with moving water in general.
Fortunately I live in area where waterfalls are common. I’ve been driving like crazy around visiting waterfalls that I have not visited for ages. I’ve been photographing creeks with water tumbling over the rocks. I might get stuck at one place for long time finding new and new images in the same spot.
Bridal Veil Falls, Washington
I’ve passed by Lake Crescent many many times. It is a large lake and one of the important features of Olympic National Park with its deep incredibly clean water. Over the years I’ve stopped at different places around it and taken several photos, but have not got any really interesting ones.
Eventually I gave up and was just passing it by on my way to the beaches of the Pacific coast. But as you know persistence pays off. So, this summer I was driving from the beaches back home and as usual my way back was around the lake. This time was different…
I saw this beautiful scene. Finally the lake opened up its soul to me. It was calm and serene. Mist was hanging over the lake hiding the west bank. Mountain ridges were coming down to the lake becoming softer and softer in the distance with shades of pastel blue. The water was like a glass perfectly reflecting the mountains and the pastel pink sky. Two trees were standing aside on the right bank. And one small next to them. Like a family that came out to the lake to have fun by its side.
Dawn at Lake Crescent
Photography has been and hopefully remain as much about playing and experimenting. One of such fun things is to introduce an artificial light sources in a landscape. The official term for it is “light painting” but for me it is just playing with flashlights, imagining what a landscape can be, and then getting a surprising result.
Like in this photo that I took at the Second Beach in Olympic National Park just after sunset, when it was dark enough for a long exposure and dark enough for a flash light (actually 3 flashlights) to make a difference.
Path of Light
I always wanted to photograph Golden Bridge and Presidio in fog but in many times I had been to San Francisco I had never seen fog over Golden Bridge. Other photographers seemed to get it every time. Not me.
This May on the way back from The Lost Coast we spent a couple of days in San Francisco. One morning Very early before sunrise I went to photograph hoping to get lucky and see that mythical fog. And lucky I was. The was fog. And not just in the morning. It was there whole day. In fact it caused our flight to be delayed in the evening.
The fog was different from the one I used to. I’m used to fog in still windless weather. Golden Bridge fog was combined with strong winds. It was constantly on the move, thickening and lightening, lifting off and dropping back to the ground, letting sun in or blocking it off all together, constantly reshaping landscape.
It presented me with new and constantly changing photo opportunities. I could not get enough of it. I was running from one place to another and then back. The only limit was time.
We all have some small thing in our lives that we enjoy a lot. One of my things is to be under cover while it is raining. Not inside a house within four walls but almost outside, where I can smell the rain, feel a fresh breeze it is bringing, stretch my arm and feel wetness of rain drops. And yet at the same time feel protected from being completely wet. Like being in an open shed in a forest. Or just being in my garage with garage door opened, standing on an edge of the rain. Moments like that make me feel warm and cozy.
In one of those moments I photographed this iris growing next to my house:
Iris in Rain
Only the first morning at Shelter Cover had clouds. All the days after that the skies were incredibly clear. The only thing that was left to photograph at dusk was gradients in the sky:
Combining with long exposures of moving water which I love to photograph:
And sun rays:
vitali prokopenko | fine art 