Few natural subjects are as breathtakingly beautiful as waterfalls. Even tiny waterfalls—such as rapids in a stream—take on an almost otherworldly beauty when photographed as the inherent motion of the water is captured in a still frame. Unfortunately, snapshots rarely capture the magic, because they're shot with a smartphone or some other camera set on automatic exposure mode. If you want to capture the blurry, smooth excitement of a waterfall, you'll need to experiment a little with your camera's advanced settings.
This waterfall photo has a shutter speed of just under one second.
Slow shutter speed
You've no doubt seen two kinds of waterfall photos. The first kind is easy to take: Just point your camera at the water and press the shutter release. The camera's fast shutter speed will tend to freeze the water in place, and you'll get an unremarkable photo of the scene. There's nothing wrong with a waterfall photo like that, but you can do better. The other kind of waterfall photo? A slow shutter speed blurs the torrent into a majestic fog of water. That's what we'll talk about here.
Good news: There's really only one trick you need to know when it comes to capturing these waterfall photos. You need to shoot with a slow shutter speed. Any shutter speed slower than about a quarter second will do, but photographers commonly use a variety of speeds up to about 2 seconds to get that creamy blur.
So how do you get a shutter speed like that? The easiest way is to dial your camera to Aperture Priority mode and then set the shutter speed. Make sure that the camera's ISO is set to its lowest value (probably 100) so you have the best chance of getting a longer shutter speed in daylight.
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