mardi 18 janvier 2005

Water Colours An ever-changing subject Water has certainly been in the news and on everyone's mind since the tsunami hit so many countries on the Indian Ocean's coastline. Water is awesome in its power... it is also beautiful in many of it's moods. It reflects, it repels, it diffuses, it hopefully enthuses, it changes colour beneath the sky... water makes a photographic theme all of its own. Water is just as essential to our lives as the air we breathe and the energy we receive from the sun. Photographing its various forms can range from raindrops on the outside of a window pane to condensation running down the inside... from still pools to raging torrents... from steamy spray to frozen icicles. Water can be used as a background to many subjects because of its simplicity... it can provide smooth, even toned backdrops or sparkling friezes with refracted highlights. Pinpoints of light can be accentuated by using "star" filters or transformed into "doughnut" shapes through the particular construction of reflex or Reflex Mirror lenses. It can also take on geometric shapes by out-of-focus reflections off the diaphragm blades of the lens' aperture mechanism. Under certain conditions when the sun is in front of you water can form an ideal background surface for interesting silhouettes... but the exposure for such a scene... bracket widely because there will be more than one "keeper" at quite different camera settings. Because water is usually moving you can photograph it in different ways. You can vary the camera shutter speed to record the subject sharply or as a blur, either way showing its liquid qualities to different effect. Water finds its own level... although it lies in flat expanses it is stirred into action by wind, tide, gravity and sometimes by man and machine.... which all play their part in giving it many different aspects, forms, patterns, textures and colours. Whichever lens you choose it's quite easy to record the endless designs on water's surface and show how the reflections of the sky, or reflected objects, scatter around. Observe how formal man-made structures can become dancing, abstract, inverted images on the surface of a river, canal or puddle in a street gutter. Camera viewpoints can be varied... the closer to the water's surface the lens is positioned the more predominant the reflection on the water becomes. Different effects can be created by intentional over- or under-exposure... film is cheap (digital cheaper) so take the opportunity to take many photos if you see something really striking or unusual. After editing the shots down to ones you want to keep you can see how and why certain angles and exposures worked and others didn't... remember from your mistakes... it's the best way of learning. Camera technique can vary with the mood of the subject... and for a different mood try black and white. Generally, using fine-grain high-speed chromogenic films such as Ilford XP-2 Super or Kodak T400CN give the photographer a wide range of available tones without any noticeable grain to spoil the ever changing reflections, forms and contours of this liquid subject... and the ease with which monochrome chromogenic films can be processed at any 1-Hour High Street outlet (as part of their regular C-41 colour negative processing) makes monochrome an interesting challenge for most people who have probably never tried it. A rougher subject such as a stormy sea or approaching storm needs a higher speed film rated at ISO 400 to freeze the wild action of the water and to compensate for the probable loss of light in poor weather. Exposures of 1/1000th of a second and faster will be needed to photograph scudding spray and crashing waves sharply. If you have your own darkroom and don't favour chromogenic films then Ilford HP5 Plus or Delta 400 as well as Kodak T-Max 400 and Fuji Neopan 400 are excellent alternatives. If you are in really wild conditions where your own body / camera movement has to be taken into consideration then much faster film stock such as Ilford Delta 3200, Kodak T-max P3200 and Fuji Neopan 1600 should be used. And forget about using a tripod when conditions are wild... your own safety and ability to move quickly (out of the way) are paramount. The opposite conditions demand a different technique... generally to use a very slow shutter speed to let the water's surface "paint" a flowing image on the film. Rivers and streams tumbling over rapids and cascades show up as soft, whitish streaks where the water flows between bank and boulder. Slow films such as Ilford FP4 Plus and Delta 100, Kodak T-Max 100 and the newer Fuji Acros 100 are ideal. As for colour... well, take your pick as there are soooo many brands out there I lose track of them! However, if you are shooting colour transparency film for slides I use and recommend both Fuji Velvia 100 and Kodak Elite Chrome ExtraColour 100 which allow a slow shutter speed with small aperture to be used when exposure times with this type of picture are in the region of a full second not tenths or hundredths of seconds. A 2x or 4x Neutral Density or a Polarising filter can he handy here to lengthen exposure times if there's too much light for your slow exposures. When using colour film a polarising filter can dramatically change the mood of a watery subject from showing a sky lit surface to a deep, dark, brooding surface... with a twist of the filter ring. A watery surface and the sky will not usually polarise at the same time so the photographer must be prepared for choose between sky and dark water or a dark sky and light water surface. Graduated filters in the blue and emerald range are also useful for enhancing the colour of water and not just the colour of sky and grass... but be very careful of graduated colour filters as they're rather passé nowadays... I'll try describing their use in another weblog if I can find good examples which don't embarass me! A useful accessory when photographing water is the Skylight filter as it cuts out the excess haze and blueness seen in watery seaside and mountain landscape photography... and protects the front element of your lens from salt spray or rain. Photographing the same location throughout the seasons can be interesting. In autumn, cool air over warm water can produce a localised mist or fog. In other seasons, raindrops form ringed ripples on the water's surface which can be captured only in a photograph because they are too fleeting for the eye to see in any detail. As with any ever changing subject you have to be very observant to catch, with both eye and camera, the limitless nuances. You can be sure that every photograph you take of a watery subject will be different... because it's forever changing. 7:42:06 PM    comment []