One thing fascinating me about photography is that you can take pictures in a way that they look different from what you would see with your bare eyes. One big lever you have is the exposure time. Fast shutter speed freezes everything in the movement and long shutter speed shows the way of every particle. A good objective for pictures like these are waterfalls. So after one month again (a bit after the last photo I featured here) and watching a few videos how to take waterfall pictures, I desperately wanted to shoot a waterfall. The problem was, I had no access to a permanently active waterfall. So I cycled along a river (Gail) hoping to spot at least a small one. You see, the one I found for sure was not impressive.

I had only the kit lense, no tripod, no remote trigger, only free software available and absolutely no experience. Obviously also not the best motive. OK, you might see the photo is not the best, but in terms of flickr-interestingness it’s still very good. So what I did was using my backpack as tripod for the camera. Took pictures with very many different exposure times, if necessary with timer instead of remote trigger. At home I looked for the best of the pictures. Then I used my free editing tools to improve the quality. Compared different edits, cuts, compared colour to black and white, edited other of the pictures in the same way and compared again. Still not done I uploaded them to flickr and participated in different groups to judge the picture. At the end I spent many hours on a picture which is not terribly impressive. I still like it very much, because I know that there are very many details, which are tweaked to just what I wanted it to look like. I think it reaches a certain quality. And I think that it shows that with time and a bit of passion it’s possible to create respected pictures even as an amateur.

Arriving there I started taking photos with very many different exposure times.