It’s always nice when you find water pouring over rocks, usually in one of our mountain streams, creeks or rivers.  Most people really like to see that soft silky effect in the water.  There are a few things you usually need to make a shot like that happen.  You will use a slower shutter speed, 1/8^th or slower, so that the motion isn’t frozen as in a sports photo.  To be able to achieve that slower shutter speed and not blowout the photo with light you’ll need to shoot the photo in a shady or darker area. I’ve also achieved the effect in sunlight using a neutral density stop filter — I carry a 4 stop in my bag.  And finally, because you’re shooting a longer shutter speed you’ll want a tripod, sandbag, or other sturdy object to shoot from.

To avoid any shake from when you press the shutter to take your photo, set the camera on a short timer, 2 seconds or so, and press your shutter.  Your camera and tripod should be nice and still when the timer fires the shutter. It takes just a bit longer but you’ll like the results more.

There were two unique challenges to this photo. One is that I did not have a tripod and had to handhold my shot. I shot at 1/10^th of a second, enough to get a bit of motion blur in the water and lucky enough to freeze my subject and at f/11 to knock down the light and give me some solid depth of field for the rocks and foliage. The second was my subject, a Sumatran tiger. Just up from a nap, the young male was calm and stood quite still with his attention trained on something more interesting to him at my right.