The rivers of the Southern Appalachians are beautiful beyond words, and when the reflected light of a winter sun bounces off an understory of last fall’s leaf litter unto a surface of churning water, magic happens, like Rumpelstiltskin spinning liquid straw into gold. The Tellico of Southeastern Tennessee’s Cherokee National Forest is such a river. It takes the drainings of the Unicoi Mountains and funnels them into an ancient narrow metamorphic sandstone gorge before delivering them to the greater flow of the mighty Little Tennessee. In its tumbling and rolling, when the light is right, the Tellico becomes braided sunshine. A focal length of 300mm narrowed my angle of view so that what was included was just the flow over a small underwater boulder and the white turbulence beyond. An aperture of f/16 provided sufficient depth-of-field, and a shutter speed of 1/15th second at ISO 100 gave a slightly lighter-than-medium overall exposure.
Beautiful flowing lines and rich colors both cool & warm.
Beautiful Don! I love the flow and the transitions of color.
A fascinating image, and well in the wheelhouse of what I’d have liked to create. I like your combination of slightly milky flow and slightly sharp turbulence. But I’d have had a hard time deciding how milky or sharp I wanted both to be. I’d have spent quite a while playing with shutter speed, other exposure settings, & various ND filters, to see later which result(s) I liked best, probably keeping several. Did you have 1/15 sec in mind as “right” for your vision from the outset?
Your water reflections with this kind of movement are always my favorites.
Beautiful capture of the contrasts in the smooth lines to turbulent, and blue to gold. These always look like magic to me because I know it is all done in camera. It makes a bright, happy, playful image. I think if this were hanging on a wall across from the coffee pot, this is where everyone would gather.
Thanks for sharing.
Rumpelstiltskin’s House is an apt title. Your photograph captures both the content and the mood of the story that ranges from peace to turmoil. The shadows and highlights are perfectly balanced to capture the beautiful gold and blue colors dancing on the water as they are resolved into a white foam sporting touches of gold reminiscent of the hair of the Miller’s daughter.
The shutter speed was perfect to capture the whimsical nature of a little gold fountain of spray springing from the foam against the background of dark blue water. Light from flowing water, light springing from the foam, and movement in the photograph give a feeling of peace with an unmistakable sense of something larger and much more powerful.
How inspiring to me that you have developed the skills and ‘eye’ to know this would be a stunning, and telling, picture. Thank you.
I thought maybe you took up painting!
Hello Everyone,
Thank you all very much for joining me for this conversation. It’s wonderful to see such a wide range of responses. Mike and Ron, thanks for your observations about flow and tonal change. Michael is very conscious of warm-cool tonal contrasts, as we all are at some level; and he regularly points them out for our awareness to focus on We would be well-advised to be as sensitive as he is, because blue-gold is a very powerful combination of warm-cool. Ron has suggested the same without being quite so specific, but they have both offered important clues as to how this image works. Thanks. Don, I really appreciate you sharing your experience with these sorts of compositions, and I’m grateful for your kind words. There are several factors involved in the decision of how to express silkiness-sharpness in a given image and perhaps the primary ones are ambient light and turbidity. These two will ultimately determine what settings are needed vs. what settings are possible as a practical matter. When you are uncertain in your own mind about how you want the silkiness-sharpness to be expressed, the best thing is to take several images with varying settings. Of course, with flowing water, each rendition will be slightly different, but varying the settings will at least give you some choices from which to select what you want. From experience, I knew that the “ideal” shutter speed under the conditions I was in was somewhere between 1/15-1/30 second, at least for what I wanted to express. We’ll play with this idea on the beaches of Rhode Island this autumn. Nancy K., thanks for your kind comment. I’m really glad you enjoy my water reflections. I’d love to hear “why” some time, but I’m happy to know that you do. Hi Nancy T., thanks for joining us. You are so right, this image is really about contrasts, and especially the ones you have mentioned; and I’m glad the overall effect of them was the feelings you described. Coffee and reflections: what a concept. Hey Warren; thanks for all of your keen observations. Where Nancy T. saw happy playfulness, you have found a range from peaceful to tumultuous. I appreciate your mentioning the highlight-shadow contrast, for it is the one that often enhances one, or more, of the others. And I do appreciate your bringing in the well-known story that was what was brought to my mind as I considered my description for the image and thought about a title for it. The little spray was possible only because of the shutter speed I chose, but that it was there at all was one of those happy coincidences that came from taking several frames of the same composition. When I saw it, I thought of the Higgs boson. And Helen and Joani, thanks so very much for your kind words. Helen, there is so much beauty for our eyes to find if we allow ourselves to become contemplative and mindful as we walk through the world. It is what I seek to share, and it ultimately comes from the twin desires to see clearly and to practice looking. No, Joani, not painting: My camera is my best tool, and I’m still learning how to use it. Thanks, Everyone; it was great having all of you join in this discussion. Your comments are deeply appreciated. Hope you will join me again next week.