One of my favorite locations as winter morphs into spring is the Greenbrier Section of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Middle Prong of Little Pigeon River and its primary tributary, Porter’s Creek, come together in glorious turmoil, especially when spring rains have filled both streambeds to brimming. Both of these watercourses are literally choked with boulders from the varied and various sandstone formations, especially Thunderhead, whose strata underlie these ancient uplifts. And while there are many ways to express this confluence of waters, my favorite is with a wide-angle lens close up against an appealing boulder in the foreground with the rushing stream trailing out into the midground and the opposing bank in the background. On this occasion I found a stone about thrice the size of a football to serve as a foreground element. As it happened, the water was high enough to wash over the near edge of the rock before swerving between it and an adjacent boulder to rejoin the main flow. I allowed the rocks to take up nearly 45% of the image, with the flow of the stream nearly horizontal through the mid-section, and the opposite shoreline covered with still-winter trees and boulders in the background. A focal length of 18mm accomplished several things, including a close-focusing capability and a lens distortion which together magnified the apparent size of the boulders. An aperture of f/22 gave depth of field; and a shutter speed of 6.0 seconds at ISO 100 gave an overall medium exposure. There were some choices available that included raising my ISO, however I decided that I appreciated the visual flow of the water as it is, and so decided to use the settings I mentioned.
Don, this is awesome. The composition, the colors are all so beautiful. Congratulations.
Hi Don,
This is an interesting photo, but I’m not sure what the focus is – is it the rock? is it the water? is it the trees? To me, it this were cropped just above the first wave above the rock, then the focus is clearly the rock with the water adding context. If it were cropped so that just the end of the rock was showing and just at the bottom of the trees, then the focus would clearly be the water. If it were cropped in the middle of the stream, then the focus would be the trees with the stream giving context. What makes photography so interesting is the different ways that different folks see an image.
I see an invitation to come sit on the comfortable rock and enjoy the serenity but the grumpy face on the rock warns me not to do it unless I want to get cold and wet. Beautiful placement of the lines to show off the motion and boundaries of the image. Thanks for sharing.
Don, your soft water usually calms me, but this piece is dynamic and keeps me on edge the longer I look at it. Thanks for the quote!
Once again, I enjoy how your technical choices produce artistic results. As I read, “thrice the size of a football,” I thought, “No way! Those foreground boulders look HUGE.” Then your explanation of focal length answered my question. Thanks for the tech tip.
Don, I too love this part of GSMNP and shoot there at every opportunity. Not only are the wildflowers profuse in this area every spring but as you have demonstrated the rocks and water along the Middle Prong provide endless opportunities for interesting images. I understand somewhat, Bob’s comments about this composition. From my point of view the rocks occupy one half of the composition, they are closest to the viewer and provide the most impact, so they are definitely the subject in this case. I like the visual flow of the water as well but I think it is void of detail so that our eyes are drawn initially to the white foaming water and we have to physically drag our eyes to the rocks. That is usually not what we want to happen in an image. Reducing the brightness of the water and adding detail using hdr or exposure blending and adding a “small” amount of snap to the foreground rocks with a slight curves adjustment would help avoid the question of “what is your subject” and retain all the elements which I believe are essential to the story you are trying to tell. Does this mean I don’t like this image. Not at all. I like it a lot and search for similar images in my own photography. I have photographed this location on several occasions. It is a spot that is popular with many photographers and you have done it proud.
Hi Everyone; thank you all for joining me. Wow, what a wonderful range of comments and reactions. These are the images that really evoke thoughtful conversation. Thank you Jessyca; I’m really glad that this image has resonated with you in this way. And Joani, I think your reaction to this composition pleases me for this reason: water as a photographic element has the amazing power to evoke many responses, depending on how we express it. It is true that usually my water images are composed with an eye toward serenity – at least most of the ones I offer publicly. However, sometimes the energy of the flow is so overpowering to me that I try to create expressions that reveal that energy. In this image the water levels in Greenbrier were quite high, being not long after a rather heavy storm in the upper watershed, and calmness seemed out of the question. Even so, by using a relatively long shutter speed I could soften the force somewhat so that it did not seem to be sheer raw power. Had I increased the ISO and used a wider aperture I could have gained possibly 3-4 stops of faster shutter, which would amount to a speed of somewhat less than one-half of a second. The water would have had somewhat more detail but the sheer volume would have made it seem, I believe, even more of a dynamic force than the 6 seconds here does. In my mind, what I saw was more related to volume than to power, but tranquility was a difficult proposition in this particular situation. Nancy T., I appreciate that you find contemplation in all situations. Thank you for pointing out the use of line here. The rock just lent itself to such usage. I am somewhat surprised that no one mentioned the paired context of the water – the high volume flow of the main stream in relation to the relatively calm trickle pouring over the foreground of the rock. Don, I do really appreciate your working through the mechanical considerations to arrive a the understanding of the use of wide angle lenses to exacerbate the size of foreground objects. It’s part of the reason I love wide angle landscapes so much; and thanks for your kind words. The technique works every time depending on how effectively one uses the lens. Bob, it is great to have you join us; I very much appreciate your observations. You are absolutely correct, one could dissect this image into three, highlighting foreground or mid-ground or background; and in each case the result might be an image to be appreciated. But in each case it would be a different image from the one I had in my mind’s eye, a wide-angle landscape, which depends on all three parts to create a unified whole. Here the idea is that the foreground trickle and its associated boulder are invitations to explore the larger scene. The boulders themselves and the waterline of the trickle between them then leads the eye forward into the body of the stream and is led across it following the line of the whitewater flowing below the darker areas of underwater rocks, which slow the flow slightly before the water plunges over them, picking up speed and turbidity. You might also say that the darker areas, themselves, create an implied line that mirrors the whitewater. Once on the far bank of the stream the clusters of boulders reflect/mirror the boulders in the foreground, creating a tacit connection between the two locations; and the tree trunks simply offer additional context for the whole. And you final observation is the telling one, how wonderful that we can each “see” the world so differently looking at the same things. And Dorsey, I am always glad to hear from you and to receive your thoughtful observations. Perhaps my comments in response to Bob will serve to answer your thoughts as well. I do agree that there might well be some tweaks that I might apply to enhance some aspects of this image to make its story speak a little more forcefully and I think your suggestions are excellent in that regard. Again, thank you all. I think it’s wonderful when we can take a single image and point out so many ways we are responsive to it and how we might do something somewhat differently if it were we behind the camera. Have a beautiful spring.