Silky Smooth Water Effect

Prerequisites:

Understanding the exposure triangle

Experience in ‘Manual’ mode

You can see it in fine art photographs everywhere: a smooth, dreamy quality to a body of water. Unlike the harsh and crunchy appearance of most smartphone snapshots, the water in these fine art images takes on a fantasy-like artistic look. How do photographers get that magical silky effect? It’s actually quite simple: with a medium to long exposure, we can blur the movement of the water into a velvety texture. Today we’ll look at how exactly to “soften” moving water: the gear needed to pull off the shot, just how “long” the exposure needs to be in different situations, and some side effects and pitfalls to avoid in the process. 

The East River in New York City is tidal and always moving, even on the calmest day. Softening the water requires a long exposure of 15 seconds or more. Notice the blurring effect the long exposure has on the moving clouds. Canon 5D III | EF 24-70 f/2.8L II | Aperture f/16 | Shutter 60” | ISO 100

GEAR

The technique to soften water is in controlling the shutter speed and the most important item aside from your camera and lens is a sturdy tripod. You may also want to bring a polarizer and a neutral density filter, especially for daytime shots. A remote shutter trigger is a convenient tool and a back-saving device when your camera is positioned low to the ground. Finally, a rain cover for your camera is good idea when shooting by water — especially near waterfalls or breaking waves. 

HOW LONG IS “LONG”? 

Sure, we know the trick to softening water is in a slow shutter speed and long exposure but what exactly do we mean by “long”? That answer really depends on a number of variables, but as a rule of thumb, any shutter speed that is too slow for a hand-held in-focus shot can be considered a long exposure. I can see some of you rolling your eyes — “just give me a number!” — so for the sake of simplicity let’s say 1/15 of a second up to 1 second is a medium length exposure, and anything over 1 second is “long”. 

“That’s quite a range” (another eye roll) — it sure is, and there’s a certain amount of experimentation needed to arrive at the optimal shutter speed for a given shot. It’s also the case that two exposures of the same scene can look quite different even at the same shutter speed.

TECHNIQUE

A good tripod is essential to pulling this off, so ensure your camera is mounted and stable before you begin. Put your camera in manual mode and set the aperture to a narrow f-stop such as f/16 or f/22. Set your ISO to its lowest native setting (100 for most Canon cameras; 64, 100, or 160 for different Nikon bodies). Evaluate how fast the water is moving relative to the camera and dial in a shutter speed of a few seconds to start. Look at your exposure meter — if the scene is underexposed, you can open the aperture a bit wider or increase the ISO. If the scene is overexposed, shorten the shutter time a bit. In bright daytime scenes it may be necessary to use a neutral density filter in order to achieve the desired shutter speed. Adjust the shutter speed until the water is softened to taste. Take several exposures and choose the best one.

The “crunchy” water look is typical of smartphones and cameras in Automatic mode. The camera is shooting with a fast shutter speed in order to ensure a sharp image — which is the right thing to do in most situations. It doesn’t know we want an artistic effect in the water. Sony QX100 with iPhone | Aperture f/4 | Shutter 1/640 | ISO 160

The key to softening water is to understand how quickly the water is moving relative to your point of view. When the relative movement is fast, you don’t need as long of an exposure because you capture more movement (and thus blur) in a given amount of time. When the water movement is slow, a longer shutter speed is required to smooth out the texture. Be careful to consider the relative movement of the water, not the objective speed. For example, a moderately flowing stream might be visually quite rapid if you position the camera low and close to the water. In other words, the water moves across the frame quickly. On the other hand, a lake in the background of the image could be churning in the wind, but because of it’s distance, the water is not moving much at all relative to your point of view. This would require a lengthier exposure. 

Fibrous streaks are a variation of softened water. In this image the camera is positioned on the bank low and just inches from the gushing stream. A modest shutter speed of 1/5 of a second is all it takes to achieve the silky tendrils in the image. A CPL filter (aka circular polarizer) will help to reduce the reflective glare on wet rocks. Canon 5DSR | EF 24-70 f/2.8L II | Aperture f/22 | Shutter 1/5” | ISO 100 | B&W Circular Polarizer

Sometimes we prefer a more fibrous look to the water, especially in rapids and waterfalls. The recipe for this effect is still in the shutter speed, but in this case longer is not necessarily better. You want to blur the water just enough to soften the crunchy look at you would achieve with a fast shutter speed. A medium shutter speed — somewhere between 1/15 and 1 second will usually produce this effect. 

Less is more: a long exposure will turn the stream into a milky mess and potentially blow out the highlights. This image was shot with a 1 second exposure — not especially long — and has already exceeded the ideal shutter speed. The mill is well exposed but the water is too frothy and some of the trees in the background show motion blur. Sony A7RII | 24-70mm f/4 | Aperture f/22 | Shutter 1” | ISO 100

SIDE EFFECTS

Long exposures can sometimes result in odd or undesirable effects in images. Remember that a long exposure will create motion blur — this is how we soften water — and that blur will affect any moving object in the image. On a windy day bushes and trees will sway, along with flags, traffic lights, boats, and even skyscrapers! Moving cars will appear as streaks of white and red when their lights are on. And clouds will lose their shape and become foggy strokes of whitish gray (sometimes this adds to the dreamy effect we achieve in softened water). There is a relatively easy way to control these unwanted effects, but it requires some work in post processing. First take the photo at the desired shutter speed to properly soften the water. Then, take a second photo with a much faster shutter speed (you will have to increase your ISO and/or widen your aperture) to ensure there is no unwanted blur in the trees / boats / moving items. Combine the two images in post processing. 

Remember that softening water is an artistic technique that deliberately stretches the shutter speed. Have fun experimenting and soon you’ll enjoy the pleasing and professional looking images you create.

The Shot: Railroad Village

The Shot: Railroad Village
Location: Taiwan
Techniques: Hand-held shooting, shutter speed, weather
Recommended knowledge: Understand the exposure triangle. Manual mode: setting your camera’s aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. 

The final shot. The historic town of Shifen is about a 40-minute drive from Taipei

If you bring your camera with you in your travels - whether it’s an overseas vacation or a day trip to a local park - it’s likely that you’ll be without your tripod for at least some of the time. Sometimes it’s not feasible to carry a tripod, especially in a place where it’s simply not permitted to do so (museums, churches, etc.). Or maybe you’ll opt to leave the tripod at home and lighten your load. Street photographers work almost exclusively without tripods, as do many photojournalists and some portrait photographers. Even if you’re a landscape photographer with unshakeable allegiance to the three-legged stabilizer, hand-held shooting is an important skill to learn for those unplanned moments when a tripod isn’t set up or available. 

FORM

The two most important technical considerations in hand-held photography are form and camera settings. In general, you’ll want to hold the camera with two hands and keep your elbows tucked in. The idea is to keep the camera stabilized with your body, effectively weighing it down. You’ve probably seen photographers hold the camera in one extended hand, using the display screen to focus, as they rattle off a bunch of shots. This is about looking cool while taking pictures but does nothing to improve the photo, and for most people will lead to poor results. If you are a portrait photographer using flash and fast shutter speed you could use this technique to look slick, and possibly to put your subjects at ease with a more easy-going posture, but for environmental shots using natural light I’d recommend going old-school: use two hands, look through the view finder, and hold a tight (but relaxed), stable stance. You won’t look as cool taking the photo, but you’ll get the better shot.  

HAND-HELD RULE

You might know the rule of thumb to use a minimum shutter speed of 1 over the focal length. For example, if you’re shooting with a 50mm lens (on a full frame camera such as a Canon 5DSR), a shutter speed of 1/50 is the slowest recommended speed for a reasonably sharp photograph. (If you’re using a crop frame camera you need to first factor in how the crop factor affects focal length. For example a Canon 7D Mark II or a Canon Rebel T7i both have a crop factor of 1.6 which effectively magnifies the image by that amount. So a 50mm lens becomes 80mm - i.e. 50 x 1.6 = 80. In this case the minimum shutter speed is 1/80. Ok, no more math, I promise!) Let’s look at an example and see how this works in practice. We’ll assume that we do not want any creative blur and would like the photo sharp throughout. 

Our location is the former mining town of Shifen, Taiwan. A slow moving train passes right through the center of the village, as it has for nearly 100 years, but these days it is carrying tourists, not coal. We’re using a Canon EF 24-70mm lens, which is my primary workhorse lens for travel photography.  We’ll use a focal length of 70mm for an image of the train passing through the colorful main street - it’s safest to keep some distance from the tracks and zoom in. Notably, this lens does not have built-in image stabilization, so it’s a good test of the hand-held rule. Based on the focal length of 70mm, our shutter speed is 1/80 (the nearest increment to 1/70), and it produces a decent image. If we zoom in however, many parts of the image are soft, and the moving train is outright blurry. No amount of post-process sharpening will make this image usable in any reasonably large size. The best we can do is process this image for low resolution use, such as Instagram (or a photography blog!)

Our first attempt might be Insta-ready but it won’t cut it for a larger size image. The train simply is not sharp (our desired look), nor does it have much motion blur (an alternative look). It's neither here nor there. (Aperture: f/8.0, Shutter: 1/80, ISO: 320)

Luckily, we’re going to get another crack at it, because the train that just passed through town is going back in the opposite direction shortly. This time we are going to increase the shutter speed to 1/320. The shorter exposure requires us to let in more light, but we don’t want to widen the aperture because this will create too shallow a depth of field. Instead, we’ll meter the scene and take a few test shots with a higher ISO while waiting for the train to return. And here’s what’s key: 1) if you have time, take a few test shots to get the exposure right before the scene unfolds. 2) Don’t force a low ISO shot at the expense of sharpness. It’s true that higher ISO introduces more noise, but today’s cameras produce clean images at higher ISO and there’s always the possibility to reduce noise in post-processing. In this instance a low ISO 100 shot requires either too slow a shutter speed or too wide an aperture for this scene… so we’ll go with ISO 1000, f/8 and shutter 1/320.  

PHOTOGRAPHY IN THE RAIN

We’ve got some other challenges too. It is raining and we need to keep our lens dry. You should always keep a UV filter on to protect the lens when shooting hand-held except in very specific situations. A lens hood is very effective in all but the heaviest rain. If you’ve got a weather sealed camera and lens, light rain or snow won’t be a problem, but it’s still a good idea to keep your gear dry. Buy a lens coat and if you don’t have one, improvise: a plastic bag will help in a pinch. 

Now let’s look at the result. Much sharper! You can easily read the numbers on the train.

This is a crop of the train magnified to 200%. (Aperture: f/8.0, Shutter: 1/320, ISO: 1000) Minor noise-reduction was applied using Topaz DeNoise.

It turns out the hand-held rule is a guideline, not a prescription. There are many factors which would require you to keep a faster shutter speed than 1 over the focal length. Let’s review some of them:

• Camera Shake Part I: Note whether your lens includes image stabilization. If it does not, increase your minimum shutter speed.

• Camera Shake Part II: Consider your technical ability. Are you experienced shooting hand-held and have you practiced the skill recently? Bump up your shutter speed if you’re rusty, and feel no shame about it.

• Situational Awareness: Evaluate the shooting situation. Are you calmly waiting for a moment, or did you just run to catch an unfolding scene, and your heart is pounding from the exercise and adrenaline? Can you pull off a stable hand-held shot? In high energy situations, crowded places, or bad weather this is unlikely, and you should raise your minimum shutter speed to compensate.

• Moving Subjects: Visualize the scene. Are you freezing moving subjects, or capturing a still life scene? Even slow moving subjects require a shutter speed greater than the hand-held minimum. Faster subjects need even faster shutter speeds. And remember that stationary subjects are not always still (i.e. trees on a windy day.)

An example of a blown shot. I hand-held a Canon 1DX Mark II with a 600mm lens for this shot (mistake number one - hand-held shots with very long lenses are very difficult to pull off), and thought if I used a shutter speed of 1/1600 that should be plenty fast since the hand-held rule would call for only 1/600 right? Not even close. The eagle’s eyes are not sharp - which makes this shot unusable, except to demonstrate an unusable shot 😀 To get this right, the ideal shutter speed would have been 1/3200. On a tripod and gimbal, with image stabilization, steady hands, and good panning technique, 1/2500 might work. Maybe.

I have missed plenty of opportunities to capture portfolio shots because I underestimated the shutter speed needed for a sharp image. Like any photographic skill, hand-held photography takes practice and is a combination of art and science. Most importantly, go out there and have fun while you learn.