Creeks with Silky Water

Characteristics of this type of shot: Creek with smooth, silky water.

Ingredients: It’s harder to make a solid creek shot than you’d think, mostly because they’re so messy. There are often all kinds of sticks and leaves and distracting stuff in the shot, so what I try to do is find an area of the stream where it’s as clean as possible, and then I zoom in tight on that area (the scene I’m standing in front of is much larger than you see here—this is one small area). If there’s a small stick or two I can remove easily in Photoshop, I’m fine with that, but starting with as clean a scene as possible is key. Also, this is a long exposure and, normally, to get the water this smooth and silky, you’d need an ND filter. But, it had been raining, with a dark gray sky overhead and a lot of tree cover and shade on top of that, so I could just use a high-numbered f-stop like f/22 to make the shutter stay open long enough to get that smooth water effect (in this case, the shutter was open 30 seconds, which is surprisingly long without using an ND filter).

Location: Glacier National Park, Montana, USA.

Camera settings: Shot in aperture priority mode; 70–200mm f/2.8 lens at 200mm; ISO 100 at f/22; shutter speed: 30 seconds.