How to combine different shutter speeds to show movement and texture in water
Waterfalls are one of the most popular subjects for landscape photography, but more often than not photographers will simply focus on turning the motion of the water into a cotton-candy like blur.
True, this looks great, but it also doesn't really reveal any detail or texture in the water, or even present a realistic view of the scene.
In this new video by Adam Gibbs, he shows how he combines a mix of long and short exposures of a waterfall to show a sense of flow, while still retaining texture and detail. Firstly he captures the scene at two different shutter speeds, 1/10s (to retain detail and texture), and 1s (to give a sense of flow).
Importing the images as a stack into Photoshop, he creates a mask on the first image (1/10s) and then inverts it. This then allows him to use the brush tool to paint detail back into the image taken at 1s.
This technique lets you capture motion in a scene, but still allows you to make a creative decision about how much or how little of the texture to reveal.
Better still, the technique doesn't just need to apply to water - moving foliage for example can benefit from this technique.