Find Your Flow — My Sight

I don’t like sunsets. The Milky Way bores me. I’m starting to wonder about waterfalls.

Don’t get me wrong. I love being there at sunset. Whether at the beach or high on a mountaintop. Letting my mind wander along with the last rays of daylight, trying to find purchase somewhere in the quickening darkness. And I am awed by the majesty of the cosmos. Overwhelmed thinking about the immensity of space, and the tiny speck of dust we occupy in it.

It’s just that I have little desire to make photographs of sunsets or starfields. Check the forecast. Go to the location. Find an interesting foreground element to anchor the composition. Set up a tripod. Dial in a setting you know by heart. Press the shutter. It all seems so rote. Even if the images that result are beautiful, they feel repetitive. Like they could have been made by anybody. Or any algorithm.

But for some reason I don’t feel the same way about waterfalls, even though the process of capturing them can be quite similar. Compose the image, plunk down the tripod, slap on an ND filter, dial in an exposure somewhere between 1/15 and 1.5 seconds, press the shutter. Rinse, repeat. We’ve all seen them: Silky water flowing through a verdant green landscape, a magical and tranquil forest glen. Lovely to look at, but holding little of the photographer in the frame. Anyone standing there at the same time could, with the right gear and knowledge, have made much the same image.

As photographers, we are all too aware of the simple techniques that allow us (or others) to create photos like this. Like a magician watching someone else’s show, we can’t un-see the trick behind the illusion. Which may prevent us from sharing in the sense of wonder that those less versed in the technical details might experience. But even for them, there’s an obvious sleight-of-hand going on. We all know, intuitively, that if we make our way to that place it will not appear as it does in the photograph. Because we’ve all seen a waterfall, and (just like the Milky Way) it doesn’t look the same to the naked eye.

I was thinking about this a few weeks ago, when I made the photo of McWay Falls in Big Sur that sits atop this post. You can’t get down to the beach, which means almost all the photographs of the falls are made from a narrow strip of dirt between Highway 1 and the edge of the bluff. While the falls, and the images that can be created of it, are beautiful, there is little hope for finding a fresh composition, much less being able to express a personal connection to the scene. The best we can hope for is to be there when the light is right. Which I was, so I dutifully set up the tripod and made dozens of photographs of the falls as it was lit up by the setting sun. The pictures are nice, but there is little of me in them.

Winter Morning Bow on Yosemite Falls, Yosemite NP

Which can be true of many waterfall shots. Despite that, I still get energized when photographing around waterfalls because I often find more opportunities to move beyond the rote, repetitive image. I’ll take the postcard shot when I get there, just to get it out of the way. Then I am free to look around, to find what else there is to see. Watch the changing patterns of the water as it falls. Notice how the light reveals the textures carved into the adjacent rocks. Explore the stream above or below the falls. Find miniature cascades that have a character all their own. Experiment with intentional camera movement, play with different shutter speeds, look for shifting patterns of light in the shallows, find reflections in sunlit pools. The possibilities are endless.

And waterfalls change over time and with the seasons, providing new things to explore each time you visit. Others might feel the same about stars and galaxies, or something else. Where I see only opportunities to create meaningless, mundane images they might be excited by something that most casual observers will miss. And that, in the end, is the magic and joy of photography. It’s not about your equipment or technical expertise. It’s not even about being there when the light is right. It’s about expressing your personal connection to the place.

So the next time you find yourself in a well-photographed iconic location, look around. Find your own flow. Let it carry you along, and see where it leads.

Five Sisters Falls, Cayo District, Belize

Thanks for reading. You can see more photographs I’ve made in and around waterfalls over here.