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My World: Obersee - above Königssee

Michael Nagel

Well-known member
These are taken the same day like the first picture here.

Obersee simply means upper lake, a pretty common name, so the precision was necessary.

There was almost no wind this morning...


Overview looking into the direction of Königssee:




A little more detail:




The other way you can see in the background the highest waterfall of Germany - Röthbachfall:





Closer:




Waterfall detail:





Best regards,
Michael
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Waterfall detail:

Michael,

I love to photograph waterfalls and find then to be the most challenging as we are faced with so many choices of what to include and exclude as the elements, sky, trees, rocks and foreground all compete for our favor.




I settle for this as the most exceptional image here. My first thoughts were that you must have stitched this, (but I'll look at the EXIF on my other computer). Utterly divine!

The entire waterfall was my favorite but this gives us an opportunity to feel the roar and crashing of the waterfall and the cool spray. I am so please that you extract this detail as it's crashing explosive roaring "splashiness" of water, that we experience. I've never seen a milky waterfall except in prizewinning B&W photographic images! How that custom came to be I do not know, but your picture gives me a full-bodies presence that's awesome.

Of course, as part of the whole, tall elegant photograph you have made, this has to be one of the best waterfall images I've seen.


Asher
 

Michael Nagel

Well-known member
Chris,

Thanks. Sure a place to be.

Asher,

Thanks. The lake and the waterfall should have been separate posts, but as there is the view like in the third picture you cannot really seperate these.
The last one I did see (almost) like that before shooting, so if you like to, this was visualized in beforehand.
I aimed for the light and the splashes, the milky part was pure coincidence (taken at 1/1000th).
I tried the same in a different setting earlier.

Best regards,
Michael
 

Paul Abbott

New member
I know it's a cliche in saying this about photographing waterfalls, but a much slower shutter speed should have been used in my view. The effect would have made the whole scene much more dramatic, creating an ethereal touch to the water too...
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
I know it's a cliche in saying this about photographing waterfalls, but a much slower shutter speed should have been used in my view. The effect would have made the whole scene much more dramatic, creating an ethereal touch to the water too...

Paul,

I cannot argue with you about milky waterfalls as that is so much a matter of the photographer's style, taste and expressivity. There's no requirement to have any "standard" mood, just the one you are creating. I do take it that dreamy tranquility seems to hover around B&W images made at extended shutter speeds.

My own pictures of waterfalls are, to be succinct, an unsolved challenge, just work in progress, I claim nothing more. But for the curious, let me share the following.

Waterfalls captivate me, but how do I bring all that home, some live "happening" thing that stretches up 30 stories up between jutting rocks, shelves, platforms and successive brotherhoods of trees. Then below, angry thunder shouting amidst tinkling, gasping and pattering of the droplets on the water and the rocks.

Every aspect of photographing waterfalls is so challenging to me, especially framing, but the shutter speed really is one area that needs thinking a lot about. After all, when one is close to the print, what scale will it be. If it's large enough, will there be sparkles from drops of water? After all, that's what one has when one is surrounded by the landscape: a roar, splashing, gurgling and lots of drops of water in the air on the way down.

I have stared, looking for milkiness, but never seen it or even imagined it. What I have come to believe, but not yet prove, is that one should take at least two sets of superimposable pictures: one at slow shutter speed and another fast enough to catch water droplets, and then bring them home to make a picture together.

That should allow each photographer to recreate the atmosphere and qualities that, to their instinct and expression shows the waterfall best.

Slow shutter speed is good for removing anything temporary.

It cannot be that the shutter of the camera, at any speed, "knows" what to draw"! In addition, the slow shutter speed, removes birds, ruins clouds, (and even the edges of trees if there's any continuous wind).

Asher
 

Paul Abbott

New member
Paul,

Every aspect of photographing waterfalls is so challenging to me, especially framing, but the shutter speed really is one area that needs thinking a lot about. After all, when one is close to the print, what scale will it be. If it's large enough, will there be sparkles from drops of water? After all, that's what one has when one is surrounded by the landscape: a roar, splashing, gurgling and lots of drops of water in the air on the way down.

I have stared, looking for milkiness, but never seen it or even imagined it. What I have come to believe, but not yet prove, is that one should take two sets of superimposable pictures: one as slow shutter speed and another fast enough to catch water droplets, and then bring them home to make a picture together.

That should allow each photographer to recreate the atmosphere and qualities that, to their instinct and expression shows the waterfall best.

It cannot be that the shutter of the camera, at any speed, "knows" what to draw"!

Asher


Obviously the photographer can make test shots out in the field so that he knows what he's getting, I certainly would with the right ND filter/s. You can achieve any degree of 'milkiness', but you raise a good point with your two shot method. It sounds like a nice idea to be able to keep that dispersed 'droplet' element in the scene...but only if they're backlit I guess.
I forgot to mention that waterfalls can be made to look so sculptural by employing a slow shutter speed and that is the point, and attraction for me.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
These are taken the same day like the first picture here...........

The other way you can see in the background the highest waterfall of Germany - Röthbachfall:





Closer:




Waterfall detail:







Michael,

A glance at these three pictures shows how many very different ways one can record one's experience of something so majestic and powerful. The tranquility of the wide angle view is so enjoyable but one misses the detail of the trees that hug the sides or the confusion at each level where the water hits segments jutting into its path.

I need all your pictures and the introduction with the lake above, to build for myself the changing presence of "being there" as one approaches.

No doubt, someone must have already made abstracts to combine all the features. I have found this cartoon-like abstraction, that attempts to get there, but not anything like that which could replace your three photographs above. You've done so very well!

Asher
 

Michael Nagel

Well-known member
I know it's a cliche in saying this about photographing waterfalls, but a much slower shutter speed should have been used in my view. The effect would have made the whole scene much more dramatic, creating an ethereal touch to the water too...
Paul,

yes it is a cliché and it may work for you. I just have seen too many milky waterfalls and I am tired of those.

Look at human perception:
For a movie you need 25 images per second, so what do you see with your eye?
You certainly won't see frozen drops, you won't see milky water either, You see a little more white.
Just for illustration two examples (smaller as these are just to illustrate the written):

1/25th:



1/15th:






The last picture of Röthbachfall was taken with 200mm focal length hand-held using a 24Mpix APS-C camera (K-3) and heavily cropped (1/3 of the original image).
A tripod was not available (impractical), so I invite you to do the same feat with ND filters and longer exposure times hand-held.
Not that I missed the tripod - this is just to illustrate that is it always easy to theoriticize...

Best regards,
Michael
 

Doug Kerr

Well-known member
Hi, Michael,

I do not see falling water as "milky" and I don't care to see it portrayed as such in a photograph!

Best regards,

Doug
 

Michael Nagel

Well-known member
Asher,

The sequence you show is the classic approach of getting nearer each time. It helps to see the viewpoints of the following picture.

In the first one you can see a low pass just above the house at the lake. This is where the second picture was taken.

In the second picture you see a very small clearing to the left of the bottom of the waterfall. This is where the third picture was taken. The third picture was corrected for perspective to match the second one. The viewpoint for the last created a backlit situation for the illuminated part of the waterfall which was what I intended.

The first two are more or less documentary shots, but the last one is one I had in mind all the way getting there.

Best regards,
Michael
 

Michael Nagel

Well-known member
Hi Doug,

Thanks. The thing is that perception and taste are individual - this makes our world more interesting.

Best regards,
Michael
 
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