Motions of A Great Blue Heron at Great Falls

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A flurry of colorful motion as a great blue heron takes flight, as seen with a slow shutter speed.

Most times I’ve photographed birds, and birds in flight, I’ve opted for fast shutter speeds to capture as much detail as possible. But sometimes it’s fun to slow everything down and allow motion blur into the finished photograph. The two photos in this post are examples of this. They were created at Great Falls on the Potomac River as viewed from the Maryland side. Both were at 440mm and a fairly small aperture of f/16, giving me a shutter speed of 1/30 of a second. This allowed a very nice amount of blur when the great blue heron took flight.

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With a slow shutter speed, a flying great blue heron can take on a ghostly appearance.

In one case I held the camera fairly still, keeping the rocks mostly in sharp focus. But in the other the tripod head was more loose and the camera moved, making the rocks look softer and out of focus, though not as much as the heron. I love the beautiful gradations of blue and gray, and the bright whites and dark blues resulting from the different colored feathers of the heron. It’s also interesting seeing the bits of blurred yellow and orange from its feet.

I think there’s a lot of potential in this style of photography to create some interesting and pleasing images. And it could easily be applied to many different genres, not just wildlife photography, but to anything that moves. Have you ever intentionally used slower shutter speeds to capture motion blur? How did it turn out? And if not then give it a go one of these days.

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Hunting Blind Sunrise on the Potomac River

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Hunting Blind Sunrise on the Potomac River #1

Back on New Year’s Day my father and I visited Widewater State Park in Virginia for an overcast and blue morning. When we went over to the Potomac River side of the park we were fascinated by this streak of warm light reflected from near the horizon as it created what appeared to be a finger or pointer directly at a hunting blind in the river. I hiked around trying for other perspectives and found one other I liked. They’re both very similar and yet the surface of the water and that warm pointer have a slightly different look.

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Hunting Blind Sunrise on the Potomac River #2

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To The Falls

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To the Falls

This photo of a paddler maneuvering his kayak upriver brings back great memories of a fantastic morning spent photographing the scenery and several paddlers at Great Falls on the Potomac River. I began the day photographing from some of the observation areas up top on the Virginia side. At first I focused on the river, itself, but then I began focusing on the paddlers on the water.

Later I decided to hike down the trail that leads to a lower area of rocks closer to water level. This is the trail some rafting groups take to bring their inflatable rafts to the rivers edge. From there they’ll take guests on a beautiful trip downriver. You have to be very careful in this area as it’s steep and rocky, and if it’s been raining it can make the rocks extremely slippery. And I have no interest going down there if the water level is too high. But you can see from the markings on the cliffs the water level that day was low compared to what it often is.

I found a spot on the rocks at a safe distance from the water, sat down, and started photographing. As when I was higher up at the observation areas, I focused both on the river and waterfalls, and on the paddlers in their kayaks. It’s always fun watching these folks maneuvering through the water, sometimes trying different moves, or positioning themselves for a specific feature on the river.

Then one of the paddlers maneuvered his kayak to the rocks just below me and came ashore, climbing up the rocks to sit near me. We had a nice conversation, talking about being on the river, different places where folks like to kayak, and photographing kayakers. We exchanged email addresses and I promised to send him any good shots of him I managed to create.

It was after he’d returned to the water I realized I had the opportunity to create the photo you see here. For most of the day I’d photographed paddlers using more telephoto focal lengths to zoom in on them and the action. But here I saw the potential for a wider view with the kayaker moving upriver, the larger falls in the distance, hopefully giving the viewer a sense of the anticipation of what’s to come, that slight calm before entering the rapids. I decided to title the photograph, To the Falls.

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