Angular Flow No. 2

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Angular Flow No. 2

The Story

Angular Flow No. 2 is a photograph of water flowing over a dam above Great Falls on the Potomac River, between Maryland and Virginia. This photograph was created on the Virginia side of the river. A previous image, Angular Flow No. 1, was created on the Maryland side. As with the previous photograph, I had been photographing the falls and some of the various birds that congregate along the river.

At one point I ended up at the dam upriver from the falls. For the previous photograph I was standing upriver from the dam looking downriver. For this photograph I was standing just downriver from the dam looking upriver.

As before, I loved the patterns and tones created by the flowing water as it flowed over the dam. And I wanted to capture the interesting forms created by the churned up water below the dam, so I knew I needed a fast shutter speed.

The Technique

To get a fast shutter speed I just needed to open up the aperture of my lens, which lets in more light allowing the sensor to get a proper exposure in less time. As a side effect this also reduces the depth of field, but I chose such a small portion of the dam, and this was intended to be an abstract image, so the shallow depth of field wasn’t a great concern. You can see the water closest to and furthest from the camera is slightly out of focus due to the large aperture.

Using an aperture of f/5.6 and raising my ISO to 800 let me use a fast shutter speed of 1/2500 second, freezing the foaming water below the dam and letting us see some of the interesting patterns.

The Processing

Below is the raw image before I made any adjustments in Adobe Lightroom. It is a color image, but there isn’t much color and it didn’t contribute anything to the photograph so I knew I would convert to black and white.

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The original raw image for Angular Flow No. 2

The exposure was a little darker than I would have preferred so I raised the exposure in Lightroom, lightening up the water. I also brightened the whites and darkened the blacks to add a little more contrast. And finally, I converted the image to black and white and adjusted each color channel to balance the tones. In this case there wasn’t much color in the image so I didn’t tweak much.

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Angular Flow No. 2 - The final version in black and white

What do you think, would you have done anything differently? Let me know in the comments below.

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Great Blue Heron Strutting Its Stuff In The Wetlands

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Great Blue Heron strutting its stuff, reflected in the wetlands.

Great Blue Herons are beautiful birds that feed and live around water. On this particular day the wetlands were full of Great Blue Herons and Great Egrets, all keeping close watch below the surface for their next meal, but also watching one another. These birds can be somewhat territorial and will try to chase off any that approach too close, though that didn’t occur in this case.

This heron had just caught and swallowed a fish and was now lifting its head and looking around, letting gravity help with the fish. I like the look of its plumage at the base of its long neck, the feathers spreading out towards the water. Some of these feathers can also be seen on its back, though not quite as striking in this photograph.

I’d been watching and photographing this heron for about 15 minutes before creating this image. I also captured images of it catching and eating the fish. But the heron was facing away from the camera at that time and the images just didn’t come out as well as this one, when it was almost parallel to the camera, or actually leaning just slightly towards the camera. The sun was behind my back, which helped light up the heron in this position.

In the end, I spent 3 hours at the park this day, which is not at all unusual. The light is softer first thing in the morning, and the animals are usually more active early. But there is often still activity to watch and photograph throughout the morning. There have been days when I spent 6 to 7 hours at the park. It’s so easy to lose track of time when watching these fantastic birds.

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The Ansel Adams Wilderness: Photographs by Peter Essick

This post contains affiliate links and I will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on my links. This is at no extra cost to you.

Cover of The Ansel Adams Wilderness

Peter Essick, a National Geographic photographer for over 25 years, had always been inspired by Ansel Adams' work. After reading Adams’ book Sierra Nevada: The John Muir Trail, Essick felt the pull to start a project photographing some of the same locations as those from the book, which in 1984 were renamed The Ansel Adams Wilderness. Essick didn’t want to recreate Adams work, but instead he wanted to create his own photographs of this region while still paying homage to Adams' work. That project resulted in a new book, The Ansel Adams Wilderness: Photographs by Peter Essick.

The Ansel Adams Wilderness, pages 16-17

The photographs are organized into 5 sections:

• PEAKS and LAKES
• PASSES and MEADOWS
• HEADWATERS and RIVERS
• TREES and PLANTS
• SNOW and WIND

The Ansel Adams Wilderness, pages 24-25

Each of these sections begins with a one page essay, followed by Peter Essick's photographs reflecting the subject, interspersed periodically by quotations from folks like Theodore Roosevelt, John Muir, Henry David Thoreau, and others.

The Ansel Adams Wilderness, pages 50-51

The book also includes a Foreword, Introduction, Afterword, and at the end one of my favorite sections, Photographer’s Notes, where Essick provides some context for each of his photographs. I love when photographers include sections where they talk about their work, what they were thinking and how they approached the scene. In this case some of the notes are very short, but others have a nice amount of detail. Each also includes the equipment used and the exposure settings for those interested, as well as the date and time the photograph was created.

The Ansel Adams Wilderness, pages 80-81

The Ansel Adams Wilderness is a really nice book. I like that Peter Essick chose not to recreate Ansel Adams photographs. Instead he used modern equipment to create his own photographs, processing them as black and whites reminiscent of what Ansel Adams might have done.

The Ansel Adams Wilderness, pages 86-87

The book is about 112 pages in length with pages measuring 8 1/2 x 10 inches. The Photographer’s Notes section begins on page 88, with everything before being photographs, essays and quotes. The paper used in my edition is a reasonably thick, smooth stock suitable for showcasing black and white photographs.

“I continue to look to nature for answers to the deeper questions, and I believe that nature offers an unlimited source of material for any artist or observer willing to look.”

— Peter Essick

Buy on Amazon

If you have an interest in photographs of the Sierra Nevada region and enjoy the work of Ansel Adams then you might also enjoy Peter Essick’s The Ansel Adams Wilderness.

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