Water in motion

In my quest to gain more experience photographing nature, I decided to work on capturing images of moving water within the past few days. We are lucky enough to have a small waterfall and creek that runs along one edge of our property, and conditions have been wet enough lately to afford me the opportunity to play with my camera. We've actually had a lot of rain in the last 24 hours, which increased the volume and speed of the water, in turn making for better pictures (I'll explain why in a minute). (As a side note to those who would be concerned, the water did not cause any flooding during our commute today, so we were able to make to work and back home safely.)

You may have seen photographs of waterfalls and running streams and rivers where the water is very ethereal-looking. I think those waterfall shots are sometimes referred to as "bridal veil" falls, since they look like, well, a bride's veil. Anyway, after doing some reading, and some experimenting, adjusting an F-stop here and a shutter speed there, I came away with some decent shots of moving water that I would like to share with you. (I only wish I would have had this knowledge, or this camera for that matter, when we visited Fallingwater several years ago!)

I took the top photo on Sunday (2 days ago), and the bottom photo today after all the rain. Can you tell the difference between the slower, less voluminous water flow of Sunday compared to that from today?

This is another photo from today, pulling back a little so that more of the water's course can be seen.

Here's another comparison between 2 days ago and today...

Both of these photos were taken today, but I took the top one to look more "normal" and the bottom one to look more "ethereal".

To sign off, here are a few more odd-ball shots. First the witch's brew...

And some cool patterns of the sun reflecting through the water onto the rocks when the water was more calm 2 days ago...