Little River Series

[Pokie]

Three views of the same section of the Little River somewhere along "Little River Road" between Townsend and Hwy 441 on the Tennessee side in Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
Day was somewhat overcast - the sun was up and a not-too-thick layer of stratus clouds was lifting.
Perfect lighting for waterfalls & whitewater - I could get a long exposure with just polarizer, no highlights blown out by sun, good even lighting coming from all directions. Nice warm light too.
Leaves were just about peak.

I could have hung out there all day, but I had more water and trees and rocks and leaves to shoot!

Exposures on these three shots ranged from about 3/4 second to about 1.5 seconds.
I find that anything over 1/4 second or so will blur moving water sufficiently.
But...the foam on top of the water tends to move much more slowly than the water itself.
Unless I have an exposure of at least a second, oftentimes the foam leaves the surface downstream from the whitewater looking 'chunky'.
You can see a little of this in the top picture (this was the 3/4 sec. exposure).


All with Nikon D80, 18-105mm f3.5-5.6, circular polarizer, TRIPOD (brought it with me on this trip!)







Pokie

[Roger S]

Nicely shot! I am impressed that they are done with just a CPOL.
Roger

[Edd]

Sorry to bump the thread but been quite busy the last couple of weeks.

Pokie the penny finally dropped last night when found time to flick through a magazine and read an article about photographing water.

The section on waterfalls highlighted the need for interesting rocks in the foreground, not boring mundane black ones. It was then that I suddenly realised why I like you waterfall shots so much.

These are great too, the water looks nice and white with out over exposing.

Great work, thanks for sharing.

Ed

[GORIO]

i love the first image pokie as i can see where the surf came and where its ending.. the foreground with leaves on the 3rd image is just spot on.

[Graham Owen]

I think all three photos are gorgeous, what a beautiful location!

[alpraytor]

These pictures are beautiful. I am going to the Smokies next week and I hope to try out my camera skills on the Little Pigeon River. Thank You for posting the setting you used. That will help me a lot.