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These images of a mother polar bear with her two cubs playfully sparring while she watched intently, were captured this past winter in Wapusk National Park, Manitoba, Canada. I spent the first two weeks of March this year in the Canadian tundra with a small group of photographers. Our primary goal: photograph these awesome mammals in their natural environment. The cubs in these images are only a few months old, so they are extremely small in size.

Local guides are required to enter the Park. Travel is done using vehicles modified to negotiate the rough tundra terrain. Travel in these vehicles is very slow and bumpy, Typical speeds for these vehicles would max out at 10 miles per hour.

Early in the morning on my first full day in the Park, two of our guides spotted a polar bear family sleeping on the tundra. After a long, slow, and bumpy ride, which took over an hour, we arrived at the site early in the afternoon to find all three bears curled in a big ball, sleeping, and covered with snow. The sound of the tundra vehicles as they approach does not alarm them, since the mother is familiar with the sound and the cubs follow their mother’s actions.

Proceeding in a slow and methodical manner, I set up my camera, lens, and tripod maintaining the Park Services recommended viewing distance. For the next couple of hours, I patiently waited in the cold temperatures and blowing snow as the bears slept. Periodically, there would be a hint of activity when the mother would open her eyes and raise her head to make sure all was OK. She would then lower her head, close her eyes and continue resting, always aware of her surroundings. Several times, the cubs would wake up and move a bit, always maintaining physical contact with their mother.

Around three o’clock in the afternoon, all three finally woke-up and began to move. The cubs then proceeded to climb all over their mother pulling her fur, ears, and paws, while maintaining physical contact with her. After 30 to 40 minutes of this, the cubs then began playful sparring. At first, they would stay close to her, but after a short time began to move away but no farther than 15 to 20 feet off to her side. This is when these images were taken.

It is always a challenge how to depict motion in a single wall print. After thinking about it for awhile, I decided to make a montage using the images from the sequence. The image featured in the center would be the mother intently watching her cubs sparring close by. This image would then set the stage for the remaining images of the cubs sparring which would be placed around the center image. The spacing between the cubs and their mother was outside the field of view of my lens so I could not include the mother in these images.

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After further thought, I decided to use the images of the cubs sparring, to make a sequence. Since the action occurred quickly, I was able to pick 10 images where the background remained constant, using these images for the time lapse sequence.

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A few weeks ago Aubrey, myself, and some friends celebrated George and Abraham’s birthday by driving out to west-central Nevada to see what we could find in and around the Toiyabe Mountains. We found some hot springs, wide open spaces, pinyon pines, junipers, burros, and many empty roads. It was a lovely break from the busy life of a young professor! I look forward to returning to the area in the spring, when there may be some flowers out and about.

Tags: nevada, toiyabe mountains, toiyabes

August 15, 2022

If you’re looking to learn how to photograph waterfalls, then this is the how-to guide for you.

Waterfalls are simple, elegant features to shoot and you don’t need one the size of Niagara Falls to get good images. A waterfall of 4ft-5ft (1.2-1.5m) or even a few feet across can be just as photogenic –  sometimes more so than a great roaring giant that is producing so much spray you can’t get near it.

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Welcome to the AP Improve Your Photography Series – in partnership with MPB – This series is designed to take you from the beginnings of photography, introduce different shooting skills and styles, and teach you how to grow as a photographer, so you can enjoy producing amazing photography (and video), to take you to the next level, whether that’s making money or simply mastering your art form.

Each week you’ll find a new article so make sure to come back to continue your journey, and have fun along the way, creating great images. If you’ve found these articles helpful, don’t forget to share them with people you know who may be interested in learning new photography skills. You’ll find a whole range of further articles in this series.

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Waterfalls in the UK: We’re lucky to have a huge variety of waterfalls across the UK, especially in Wales, Scotland and the North of England. Southern England isn’t short on these cascades of water, either, with some excellent examples on Exmoor in Somerset. You’ll even find some waterfalls in local parks or nearby rivers.

Lead image: River and waterfall in woodland, Brecon Beacons National Park, Wales. Photo: Jeremy Walker

How to photograph waterfalls

On first seeing a waterfall, look around your location and take time to study the flow of water. Waterfalls are living entities and they will pulse with the flow and volume of water. Don’t fall into the trap of trying to shoot the waterfall in its entirety, as you’ll find many excellent images by looking for sections, abstracts, details or close-ups. Try to identify individual rivulets within a fall, curtains of water, or rocks and boulders that will add shape, direction and flow to your shot.

Health and safety

Before you shoot your waterfall, be aware that you’ll probably be working in a wet environment, with spray from the falls making the surrounding area very slippery. Take care when climbing over rocks to get in position and carry your kit in a camera bag. Moving around a wet, slippery location with thousands of pounds’ worth of camera kit on a tripod is asking for trouble. If there’s spray coming from the waterfall you’ll need to protect the front of your lens with a lens hood. If moisture is falling on the camera, try using a chamois cloth to wrap around it and help protect it and the barrel of the lens.

There are probably two main approaches to shooting a waterfall: the big, wide view, perhaps showing the whole of the falls, going for the dramatic in its landscape setting; or the closer, more intimate portrait showing the finer detail that’s easily missed when struck by the grandeur of a big fall. Both approaches can work well, but look for a composition that helps to tell a story, such as fallen rocks at the base of a waterfall, a dead tree across the river or even plant life growing in the rock face.

The most simple tool for composition is, of course, the camera itself, and don’t be afraid to turn the camera through 90° to shoot upright. It sounds so simple, but when faced with a long, wide subject it’s tempting just to use the camera horizontally.

Best time to shoot

The light at the beginning and end of the day is usually regarded as best for shooting landscapes, and this can also work for waterfalls, but they do present a unique set of problems. Many waterfalls will be in V-shaped river-cut valleys, and early morning and late evening light won’t hit the falls unless the valley is facing roughly east or west. When the sun is high, direct light on the water can be too contrasty and the highlights will lose all detail. The water will also look mottled and messy.

Unusually for a landscape subject, soft light from a grey, overcast sky can be the ideal conditions for shooting waterfalls. Soft light lacking contrast will always illuminate the water evenly and make it look much smoother. Also, if the waterfall is surrounded by trees and heavy foliage, a soft light will prevent unsightly shadows forming across what is the most important part of the image.

One of the big problems when shooting waterfalls is being able to convey their size and scale. It may not be obvious from adjacent boulders, trees and other objects in the shot just how big or small a waterfall is. The best way to convey the message of scale is to include a human figure, as we can easily relate to the size of a person. If you really want the figure to stand out, get them to wear a brightly coloured jacket!

Exposure and camera settings

There are two schools of thought when exposing for a waterfall, or any shot where flowing water is an issue. Do you shoot with the fastest shutter speed possible and ‘freeze’ the motion, perhaps capturing every droplet of water with a shutter speed of 1/2000sec or higher? Or do you go for an exposure of several seconds, perhaps even minutes, and capture a smooth flow and silkiness to the water? Both techniques have their merits and can to help convey a story or message.

How to freeze motion

If you choose the fast shutter speed approach, you may want to bump up the ISO, so you can have a high shutter speed and still shoot at a reasonable f-number for depth of field, such as around f/8 or f/11.

Using a flashgun will also ‘freeze’ the motion of water, but you’ll only be able to cover a relatively small area of the waterfall with this technique. You may also have unwanted and very false-looking highlights.

How do you shoot smooth waterfalls?

To prolong your exposure and create the silky-smooth-flow effect, you’ll need to increase the exposure by dropping the ISO down to as low as it will go (ISO100 – ISO200 depending on your camera), and then using an ND filter such as the Lee Filters Big Stopper (or similar 10 stop ND filter). This will increase the indicated exposure by 10 stops, with a 1sec exposure, for example, becoming 17mins.

However, you don’t actually need 17mins, as anything from a few seconds to a couple of minutes will start to look good, depending, of course, on how fast the water is moving, and an ND filter with less stops such as 3-6 stops will be easier to manage.

Remember to meter for a midtone grey, rather than the pure white of the waterfall for an accurate reading. If you meter for the white of the water, you’ll end up underexposing the shot.

Before and After

Compose and set up your shot as normal, metering for a midtone grey. Shoot with the indicated exposure, checking the histogram to ensure that the highlights and shadows aren’t clipping. Apply a Lee Big Stopper / ND filter and recalculate the exposure. In the case of a Big Stopper (and other 10 stop ND filters), it would be 10 stops, (for example, 1/30sec would become 32secs). Expose at the new recalculated exposure and the water should become blurred or smooth and silky, depending on how fast it is flowing.

Shooting waterfalls can be fun, and to a certain degree therapeutic and soothing, but a final word of warning: shoot from the bottom of the waterfall and look up.

Climbing to the top of a waterfall and looking down is rarely the best view and you risk standing on wet slippery rocks right next to a long drop. It’s not the fall that hurts you – it’s the landing!

One that didn’t work – or did it?

Simplicity is often the key to success. Every now and then we’ll see an image, shoot it, think we quite like it and then, a few minutes later, a nagging doubt sets in and we try to ‘improve’ the shot. I’m never averse to a little ‘gardening’ if it helps an image, such as removing a distracting twig, stone or leaf. However, if you have to start building the foreground there may be something wrong. Does the image need a pile of nicely shaped boulders? Should there be more stones in the pile or should I have just lived with the foreground as it was?

Jeremy’s Top Tips and ideas to photograph waterfalls

1. Sense of scale

It can be difficult to convey the size and power of a waterfall. Because we can relate to the size of a human, use a person, preferably brightly dressed in a red jacket (as seen above), and have them stand near the waterfall.

2. Enhance colour

If there’s enough spray, and you can get the right angle relative to the direction of sunlight, you’ll get a rainbow. Use a polariser to enhance the colours, but be aware that the polariser increases your exposure by up to 2 stops.

3. Close-ups

If you can’t take a ‘big view’, showing the waterfall in all its splendour, look for smaller ‘micro’ alternatives. Search for close-ups or abstracts and use long exposures to show the flow of water that the human eye can’t see.

4. Don’t give up

If you turn up to shoot a waterfall and things aren’t as you planned or hoped, don’t just walk away with nothing. Look for the offbeat or even bizarre. Think ‘outside the box’ and consider how you can use what is around you to your advantage.

5. Add mood

Use the camera’s white balance control to alter the mood, look and colour of an image. Blue will suggest cold and wintry conditions (3200K or lower), while a higher setting makes the image warmer. This technique works best when there’s no other colour in the image.

Top kit to photograph waterfalls

You don’t always need to buy new when getting kit to photograph waterfalls, with second-hand camera gear often being great value, and you may already have what you need to get started.

Once you’ve got your camera sorted, there are a few essential items that will make your waterfall photography even easier, and more enjoyable. Here are our suggestions on what makes for some essential kit.

Lens choice

A good range of focal-length lenses will be useful, depending on how close you can get to the waterfall. A 24-70mm and 70-200mm lens will cover most eventualities, but an extreme wideangle, such as a 14-24mm f/2.8 zoom (or equivalent), will work well for closer shots. If you’re looking for a great wide-angle lens, have a look at our guide to the best landscape lenses.

Tripod

For long exposure photography, you’re going to need a tripod. This will allow you to extend your exposure time, whilst keeping the camera steady and stable while you shoot. Use of the self-timer, or a remote release can help here, and be sure you clean your tripod afterwards to keep it dry. Read our complete guide to tripods.

Filters

A circular polariser is useful for enhancing the colour of any rainbows, but also for taking the sheen and reflections off the surface of the water and increasing contrast. A 6-stop or 10-stop filter is also handy to increase the exposure length to create blur and motion. Have a look at the top 3 filters needed for landscape.

Chamois cloth

A chamois cloth of the type available at motoring accessory shops is useful for wrapping around your lens and camera to protect your kit from spray. It’s also useful for wiping moisture off your camera kit should it get wet. Make sure you keep your camera and lenses clean after shooting near water, have a look at our guide to cleaning your camera kit.

Wellies

At some stage you’ll probably want to shoot from the wettest place possible, and you’ll end up in a puddle or a tributary of the river. If you need new wellies, choose the neoprene-lined thermal variety. Warm, dry feet are essential, and will extend your comfort, and ability to keep shooting. Wet feet don’t make for a happy photographer.

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Jeremy Walker is an award-winning professional photographer with many years’ experience specialising in high quality landscape and location photography from around the world for use by advertising, design and corporate clients. His belief in ‘quality is everything’ serves his clients well. www.jeremywalker.co.uk

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More reading:
20 top tips for photographing water
The best Landscape photographs

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Tune in next week, for the next article in the series of the AP Improve Your Photography Series – in partnership with MPB.

Find the latest Improve Your Photography articles here.

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Mt Rainier National Park

Mount Rainier National Park is an American national park located in southeast Pierce County and northeast Lewis County in Washington state. The park was established on March 2, 1899 as the fifth national park in the United States, preserving 236,381 acres (369.3 sq mi; 956.6 km²) including all of Mount Rainier, a 14,411-foot (4,392 m) stratovolcano.

The mountain rises abruptly from the surrounding land with elevations in the park ranging from 1,600 feet to over 14,000 feet (490–4,300 m). The highest point in the Cascade Range, Mount Rainier is surrounded by valleys, waterfalls, subalpine meadows, and 91,000 acres (142.2 sq mi; 368.3 km²) of old-growth forest. More than 25 glaciers descend the flanks of the volcano, which is often shrouded in clouds that dump enormous amounts of rain and snow.

Glaciers, lava flows, wildflower meadows, giant stands of ancient trees. All these extraordinary sights can be found in Mt Rainier National Park, one of the nation’s oldest national parks found less than sixty miles from Seattle.

All year round, sightseers, hikers, and photographers flock to this iconic feature of the Washington landscape; not only to see an active volcano that towers more than 14,000 feet above sea level, but to explore the gorgeous surrounding scenery.

The national park is home to ancient forests, dense wildflower meadows, and abundant wildlife. Overall, Mt Rainier offers one of the best locations in the world to fully experience nature unlike anywhere else in the world.

A Quiet Danger

Due to its high probability of eruption in the near future, Mount Rainier is considered one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world, and it is on the Decade Volcano list. The large amount of glacial ice means that Mount Rainier could produce massive lahars which could threaten the entire Puyallup River valley. According to the United States Geological Survey, “about 80,000 people and their homes are at risk in Mount Rainier’s lahar-hazard zones.

Osceola Mudflow

The Osceola Mudflow of 5,600 years ago was Mount Rainier’s signature event during the Holocene. During a period of eruptions, avalanches caused 2 to 3 km³ (0.5 to 0.7 mi³) of mainly hydrothermally altered material from the volcano’s summit and northeast slope to slide away. This lahar swept down the west and main forks of the White River, passing the location of current day Enumclaw before reaching the Puget Sound near present-day Auburn.

The Osceola collapse left a 1.8 km-wide (1 mi-wide) horseshoe-shaped crater, open to the northeast, almost the same size as the crater produced by the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens. Most of the Osceola crater has been filled in by subsequent lava eruptions, most recently about 2,200 years ago.

A Photographers Paradise

As a nature and landscape photographer, I truly believe that you can find beauty everywhere you look in the natural world, from the grandest vista to pebbles in a stream. That being said, there are some places that just ooze wonder and Mt Rainier National Park is at the top of this list. It truly is a photographers paradise. I am blessed that the park is just over two hours from my doorstep and while I have visited many times with my camera, the past year hunkered down in our homes has made me realize I haven’t visited nearly enough. This year, with hopes of life returning to some sort of normalcy, I hope to return to the slopes and alpine meadows of the park many times, with my family and with my camera. I took my daughter on her first long hike there when she was three and a half and now it’s her brothers turn. 🙂 I hope you find your way to the park one day to see it with your own eyes as well!

The History of the Park

Mt Rainier’s unique glacial landscape generated interest in preservation as early as 1893. Due to the nature of the landscape, the land couldn’t be used for other purposes like agriculture or mining and there was a need for tourism near Seattle and Tacoma. People from a wide variety of backgrounds united over these issues and, ultimately, passed a bill to make Mt Rainier a national park in 1899. At that time, Mt Rainier became the nation’s fifth national park.

Since then, visitation has continued to steadily grow. It saw steep inclines over the course of its first few years. In 1906, roughly 2,000 visitors made their way to the park. Less than a decade later, that number would grow to nearly 35,000. Over the years, park administrators have had to constantly strive to keep up with demand for more roads, lodging, and other amenities. And, as you can imagine, the glacial landscape means it isn’t the easiest accomplishment in the world to just build more roads!

Mt Rainier would eventually figure out its road troubles and become the first national park to allow cars! While this might not have been the best news for the environment, it was great news for those looking for an easier way to access and experience the park.

Whatever infrastructure was eventually put in place is working; from the early 1900s all the way to today, growth within the park has continued to blossom and visitor numbers climb each year. In 2016, over 1.8 million people visited the park.

Despite its challenges, nothing has ever stopped administrators or visitors alike from being truly passionate about Mt Rainier National Park.

The Priority of Preservation

In 1988, The Washington Wilderness Act of 1988 designated 98% of the park as wilderness. This not only gave the land greater protection against development, but shifted the focus of the park to emphasize and protect its most precious resource: nature.

Long ago, the park said goodbye to health spas and golf courses and instead ushered in an age of preservation and outdoor recreation.

The evolution of the park is part of what makes exploring it so magical. When you visit, you likely get on a plane or get in your car, take a shuttle from the airport, stay in a nice hotel, and enjoy any number of other modern conveniences all to experience the natural wonders of Washington’s Mt Rainier.

But, for hundreds of years, visitors of all kinds truly struggled to get there — either by horse or by foot — through the Washington wilderness to experience the overwhelming beauty of such an iconic location.

Walking among the same trees that those visitors walked among is truly something special. Forests alone are nearly 58% of the park landscape. Western hemlock, western red cedar, and Douglas-fir are just a few of the trees that tower around you. And, when you travel too high up the mountain, the forests open up to sweeping wildflower meadows. That means that no matter where you go, there’s always new wilderness and hidden treasures to discover.

What more could you want?

More to Love

In addition to Mt Rainier’s ancient forests and wildflower meadows, Mt Rainier itself is an impressive sight. No matter the season, the volcano serves as an impressive and majestic backdrop for the rest of the landscape. No matter how enthralled you are by the forests and meadows, it’s hard to take your eyes off this impressive summit.

Additionally, Mt Rainier National Park is home to a variety of hidden waterfalls fed by snowmelt from the glaciers. Some waterfalls only appear during certain times of the year, while others are always present. Most of the waterfalls are best viewed in the early summer as snow truly begins to melt or in autumn during seasonal rains.

Whether you’re looking for scenic landscapes, extensive hiking, nature photography, or you simply want to find your own special spot in the park, Mt Rainier has a little bit of everything, making it one of the most unique destinations in the world.

The entire park is teeming with life, while also residing in the shadow of a looming volcano. The beauty and the contrast are what make Mt Rainier a magical destination.