Shooting waterfalls is a must to-do, especially with those folks who shoot nature and landscape. Shooting a waterfall is fun and very rewarding especially if you recognize the way to get the best waterfall images. The whole idea of shooting a waterfall is to point out its is flow and motion, sometimes bigger waterfalls are visualised in wide angles to offer a thought about its vastness and size. A waterfall also will be suffering from its flow of water and particularly during monsoons where all water bodies are full and flowing. It becomes an excellent opportunity for photographers to capture images of the waterfalls. Waterfall images are often made very interesting with a mixture using lens, composition and tools sort of a ND filter or a polariser. In this article we’ll discuss some tips to form your waterfall images even better and guide you to a number of the gorgeous waterfalls in India where you can go and shoot amazing images.

To begin with capturing waterfall images, you’ll need a camera that has full manual control over the settings, be it a DSLR or a mirrorless camera. Although it’s not really necessary to possess high end gear to capture good images and your crop sensor camera is quite enough.

Using an ND filter.

ND or Neutral density filters control the mount of sunshine hitting your sensor. This becomes very helpful in situations where you’ve got to regulate the quantity of sunshine. You can do an equivalent changes with the settings of the camera also but an ND filter offers you more freedom when you would like a bigger aperture within the middle of the day. There are a couple of disadvantages with ND filters, especially while shooting landscape and therefore the time of the day has harsh and hard sunlight. In such cases there’ll be areas with high intensity light forming hotspots then the shadow areas. In such a case, using an ND filter will get lesser details in the shadow region. To solve this, you ought to consider shooting at dawn or dusk depending on the intensity and direction of the sun.

Pay attention to details just like the environment, the direction of sunshine and the the elements that you simply want in your frame. It’s important to compose your shot before you press the shutter. Employing a wide angle lens will allow you to bring more area into your frame.

Choose your exposure correctly.

If you’re fixing fully manual, it’s suggested that you to take it easy on the settings. One thing you will surely require while shooting a waterfall its the sense of motion and flow. This needs opening the shutter for a extended time for that the exposure can capture the flow of the water with the environment perfectly steady. Sometimes there is going to be a considerate amount of wind and this may cause the trees and a couple of elements in your frame to move and cause blur. This can be overcome by shooting multiple exposure and a couple of where the exposure is balanced for a faster shutter speed so that the elements can be captured steady. Later the pictures are often stacked in post-processing and a wonderfully blended image are often achieved.

Use a polariser to eliminate the unwanted reflections in the image. When shooting waterfalls, you’ll encounter variety of places where there will be tons of reflections. Reflections do look good in some situations but most of it might be unnecessary. So you’ll need to adjust the filter to get the utmost effect of removal of reflection.

Take a look at the histogram.

The histogram shows the quantity of highlights and shadows within the image and always keep the values from blowing up. An excessive amount of highlights or too dark shadows aren’t desirable as there’s tons of details which will be lost within the shadows and highlights. You have to shoot in RAW file format to permit you to fix anything that has gone wrong. But always make sure to have a glance at the pictures and fix anything directly inside the camera instead of depending upon post processing.

Use a tripod

Use a tripod to keep the camera steady, select the smallest ISO and set the aperture narrow. See the desired shutter speed if achieved or use an ND filter to get even slower speeds. The thought is to get the water in motion which can look milky after completing the exposure.

Most places and countries have some or the other waterfalls flowing. These waterfalls tend to be bigger and more beautiful during the monsoons and make incredible subjects for landscape photography. In India, there are quite a couple of waterfalls and if you would like to travel and capture some waterfalls, Google about the amazing places in India where you’ll get the simplest waterfall images.

Handheld shots for long exposures

Your arms aren’t as stable as a tripod. They shake a little, and so for handheld shots, you cannot set your shutter speed to a very low value. Telephoto lenses can significantly magnify distant subjects, but every millimeter of hand motion can mean as much as a meter-wide jump for the objects in the frame. The general rule of thumb is that you can use a shutter speed of up to [1/focal length] seconds. So with a wide, 24mm lens, you can use up to 1/30 seconds approximately, while a telephoto lens with a 400mm focal length will need a much shorter time: 1/400 second. If there’s not sufficient light for the shot, then you need to increase the ISO, decrease aperture value or use the stabiliser if your camera or lens which comes with stabilisation. When none of these options works, then you can shoot using a tripod or lay your camera on a flat surface. If there’s nothing usable around, then you can support with your hands against your body. That gives you more steadiness, and so you can use somewhat longer times. By leaning against a tree, you can improve things even more.

Times Too Long for the Action

You can keep the camera as steady as you want, but if you’re photographing humans or other living beings, their movement in images will be blurry. So, when shooting social events, you keep to a shutter speed of 1/125 second or faster than that. Or at worst at a shutter speed of 1/60 seconds, but in that case, be prepared to risk having blurring in your images. If you want to capture sports, you’ll find that even shorter shutter speeds are required. They can need shutter speeds as fast as 1/400 seconds, depending upon the sport and the photo’s style. Here neither a stabiliser nor a tripod will assist you, so if you’re shooting within a hall with a restricted amount of light, unfortunately, the only answer is a good camera and lens which works well in low light.

Not Using a Tripod

But there are also images that instantly demand a tripod. Special shots like long exposure photos of the milky way or star trail shots or panning of moving cars etc. A tripod can assist you to maintain shutter speeds that are much much longer. But to work with a tripod isn’t as easy as it might seem. We recommend you to research which kind of tripod you may require and about tripod mounts, weights and so on before investing on one.

Leaving the Stabiliser on

While it’s best to leave the stabiliser switched on in low light conditions, there are also cases where it’s best to keep it off. These mainly refer to when capturing photos using a tripod, where a stabiliser will start vibrating your whole body due to the motor. Certain stabilisers only allow you to turn it “on” and “off”, but some also provide a third choice, “on for one axis only”. This fixes the problem of panning etc when the stabiliser is on.

Leaving the Stabiliser off

Photographers many times forget to turn the stabiliser back on after shooting on a tripod. And also, sometimes they might accidentally push its physical switch while manipulating the lens, or while taking the camera out of the bag. That’s why it is best to stay alert and, if the image in the frame is unusually shaky, double-check if the stabiliser is turned on.

Low Depth of Field

Difficulty with low Depth of Field is mainly displayed in two situations. The first is when you are using a DSLR with a prime lens and an f-stop of say f/1.8 which is a great low light choice mostly. It gives you a superb optical detachment of subjects from their background by using bokehs. The trouble comes when photographing more than one subject in one frame who are standing in different focal planes. You need to keep in your mind that for images like these, you have to keep aside the block lenses or increase your aperture value to f/4 or above to keep all the subjects in focus. Otherwise, all it takes is for one subject in the group to take a half-step back or front, and they get out of focus. Another problem shows itself when you are capturing landscapes, and you want to capture both small objects and a far horizon. Sometimes even the highest f-stop isn’t enough, and the only answer is to merge a picture from two images, one focussed closer and the other farther.

Bad Focus

Sometimes the automatic focus in the camera can be faulty too. It is sometimes disturbed by small nearby objects such as bushes behind people or moving objects in the background. Bushes provide lots of high-contrast points that your camera is happy to focus on. So for such a situation, all you need to do is turn off autofocus and focus your subject using the focus ring manually on the lens. Macro shots require high levels of focussing and it is often advisable to use manual focus for the same.

A Defective or Low-quality Lens

Once we get down to minutely examining a photograph on a pixel level, there is a clear difference between an expensive, high-quality lens and a lower-quality one that is supplied with beginner cameras. If you are bothered by blurry lenses, there is only one solution: research about the lenses and spend on a decent one. After the research, you may see there’s also a difference between a good lens and a great lens. If you consistently get bad results when the reviews say you shouldn’t, it’s time to take your lens into the shop for cleaning or other defects.

Bad or Dirty Filters

A good lens is a good beginning, but you can always make it terrible with a filter. There’s no risk with good filters, but look out for low-budget ones as they can pose problems for the lens during focussing which can cause blur and even add overexposed spots on the photographs.

No Computer Sharpening

Knowledgeable photographers always sharpen their images after reducing them down to presentation size. If you just reduce the picture size without sharpening them afterward, your work will probably look unprofessional at best.

You might already be well-known with the above mentioned points, but some might be new for you. No matter what, it is good to be cautious, and, if supreme sharpness is your goal, shoot slow and steady. As soon as something seems fishy, go ahead and look into the problem. Nonetheless, for other problems, you need to understand where they are coming from and try to check if any of the above mentioned things can help you out. Make sure you do not let any dust or other particles fall on the sensor or the lens when changing lenses outdoor. Your reward will be images that are sharp and stand out from the rest.

“I will not harm my subject!”

Every photographer should happily follow this simple rule – even when no one else is watching.

This is not a hard job for anyone, and for those with a true love, nature is always priority for them. Unfortunately, thanks to the huge numbers of photographers who now own professional photography gears, and are perpetually on the look out for nature subjects to capture and instant satisfaction after uploading the images on social media and there are examples of photographers damaging wildlife or habitats in chase of the perfect shot, which has been alarmingly common. Many of it is due to a lack of awareness and knowledge.

Whatever it might be, one thing is sure, if right-minded nature photographers get together, we can stamp out the danger of unethical photography to a large extent and it will also help the beginner generation to learn ethics. Self-regulation is the best regulation, so make sure to follow all the rules before you step into widlife.

Then, now and will

One of the most shocking chapters in the history of wildlife photography in India is the bird nest photography trend that outspread like wildfire in the early 1990s. Battling to other photographers, many photographers skilled a level of harshness and insensitivity that was terrifying. Their practice was a bit simple: they would watch around, or offer money to the locals, for finding the active nests for them. Once the nest of a wanted species was located, the photographer would go and do some gardening – a substitute for removing branches or leaves to get a proper view of the nest. With the obstacles out of the way, nesting activity would be captured from all the angles, sometimes using external flashes placed around the nest. Once the photographer was satisfied with their results, they would leave, exposing nest open to predators. Some photographers even destroyed the nest (or eggs or chicks) so that others could not take capture the image they have.

This battle was in trend for few years, until there was strong stricture from photographers and nature conservationists with a moral sense. The harmful practice finally end when nest images were banned from competitions.

Back then there were very less nature photographers in India, so any harm caused by a few unethical photographers was very less. Since there is no entry exam or test for newcomers, the annual increase in the number of wildlife photographers was tremendous. Cameras and lenses was very expensive due to custom tax duties. It was very hard to see a photographer with a 300mm lens. Film and printing was costly too. And not every photographer had a car to take off in the outskirts on weekends. The kind of budget needed to follow this costly hobby was largely limited to very few people.

But all that was transformed with economic reforms and the technology upgrade. Suddenly, beginners were able to get five-figure salary jobs straight after graduation. At the same time, custom tax dropped down, camera manufacturers started setting up dealerships in India, social media started becoming a trend, and wildlife documentaries on TV and internet lighted an tremendous thirst for travel and photography. Nature photography as a hobby increased like a boom.

While its not a crime with enjoying nature and capture wildlife, how one does it that matters. Enjoyment must always be baked with responsibility. Unfortunately in India, the two rarely go hand in hand. You will mostly see an educated person who’s the wrongdoer rather than some uneducated. And there are millions of educated people with high sound cars, but with utterly no sense of road rule and then there are thousands of educated people with the best cameras and lenses, but very less love towards nature.

Unethical photography? What’s that?

Many photographers likely don’t even think about their impact on nature and wildlife, and may take animals simply as models that exist for capturing pleasure. They don’t even think that their actions can cause stress to an animal. Simply becoming aware of the issues might make any photographer good and helpful. And those who are decent and can think properly on their next outing, and change their behaviour appropriately will be a great help.

For example if we consider one of one of the world’s rarest birds, the critically endangered Great Indian Bustard. This large bird, which is found in grasslands, is extremely shy of human interaction. When it spots a intruder even hundreds of metres away, its reaction is to hold whatever it is doing and fix its eye on the intruder. As long as it feels threatened, the bird will not feed, court or mate. As a result of the disturbing activity caused by some few photographers, the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) was forced to issue a circular restricting photography of the bustard during its mating season.

Damage to habitats can be big too, when many people and their vehicles are found on a particular location. For example, the Hesaraghatta grasslands on outskirts of Bangalore suffered high damages as a result of insensitive weekend bird photographers. Luckily, thanks to the problem being highlighted and talked about on social media and photographers, there has been a change for the better in some areas.

While it’s impossible to measure or list every type of unethical behaviour of every unethical person; awareness, knowledge and common sense are the best guides for every photographer out there. If you think that something you are doing, or are planning to do, may cause harm to your subject or habitat, back it off. It’s that simple.

The way forward

Like it or not, the craze for wildlife photography seems to be growing like anything in India. So it’s better that we work together to decrease the negative impacts. Well as of now we don’t have any ‘All-India Association of Nature Photographers’ to set rules and regulations and supervise behaviour, how do we go about controlling the practice of nature photography by every nature lover in our country? There isn’t any one way of practising it, but that doesn’t mean we should give up our responsibility to protect the nature.

The best and most important factor in changing behaviour of the coming generation might be to set a good example or inspiration. Good inspiration or role models are important in every field, and wildlife photography is not different. If you are a experienced photographer, try to be a good role model for your audience, and lead by example. If newbies are following you and have questionable practices, they will learn and assume that this is how wildlife photography is to be done, and imitate you. If you are seen having respect for nature and wildlife, not only will your respect go up, but your attitude may also put a good impact on others.

After you are experienced, you will definetely also have a lot of followers on social media platforms. Reach out to the professionals once in a week with messages about ethics in wildlife photography. Also try to share the tips with your fellow followers as well as it will make a strong belief on those who are still not aware about the ethics in field.

If you are conducting wildlife photography workshops, start and end each workshops with a strong appeal for ethical behavior when capturing nature. Make your audience take a honest pledge towards ethics. This will definitely impact those who have less knowledge or are less aware. As for those who simply don’t care about nature and wildlife, they will be automatically change their behavior when more and more photographers become humble towards nature and intolerant of unethics.

To multiply your positive effect among the younger generation, the most important thing is not to be distrustful about your knowledge to bring about optimistic behavioural change in other photographers. Here’s an example of something that all have seen in our surroundings: when a area or road is kept clean due to the efforts of some of its locals, others think before littering the place. Even if they do, there are eyes to criticise or shame them, making sure that they don’t litter again, that’s how you bringing everyone into line. In the same way, you can clean up unethical wildlife photography, if we practice together and learn what’s right.

Examples of unethical practices and how to curtail them

While it’s not possible all the time to specify ‘unethical’ in black and white terms, or point out every example.

Please note that some of these activity, in addition to being unethical, are illegal and violate various wildlife and environmental laws. If reported, they could draw in strong penalties and legal action.

Issue 1: Crowding

Too many visitors or safari jeeps gathering around an wild animal in National Park or Wildlife sanctuary, or purposely going too close to provoke a growl or a attack.

Impact:

Causes high stress, and breaks the wild animal’s natural behaviour, such as courtship, hunting and feeeding. In the case of big animals like big cats or elephants, regularly being close to them can be dangerous.

Remedy:

When you sight a wild animal, always keep a safe distance between the safari and wild animal. When you see other safari coming, take a few photographs and leave that spot. If you see any officials, drivers or photographers breaking the rules, carefully take a picture or video of this and report it to someone in authority.

Issue 2: Nest or den photography

Capturing images of mammals at their dens orbirds at their nests.

Impact:

This causes disturbance and stress in animals and they can abandon the nest or den. In the case of big cats, it forces the parents to move their juveniles to another den, which can be dangerous for them. This can also attract other unethical photographers and poachers too.

Remedy:

Avoid capturing images of nest or den. Stay away from newborns or juveniles. This also includes manipulating nest or nest area. Publishers and competitions should be very strict about accepting nesting and den photographs.

Issue 3: Playback of birdcalls to attract birds

Impact:

Wildlife survey have shown that this can cause stress to birds. The available study material advice that replying to call-playback may effect in bird energy, disturbs their territory and can lead to pair break-ups. Playing bird sounds during their mating season can confuse adults from more crucial tasks like mating, guarding the nest, and defending their territories.

Remedy:

Refrain from use of bird calls, particularly for rare and endangered birds.

Issue 4: Handling amphibians and reptiles for photography

Impact:

To start this, picking up and handling wild animals is illegal. It also causes them terrible stress. If a snake is feeding on something, the first response to handling will be to vomiting its food.

Amphibians can be infected with bacteria from your hands, which can be fatal to the individual and sometimes to the whole species in the area. Taking them out of their habitat will cause their body or skin to dry up, and can be tough to survive. Some photographers refrigerate fast-moving reptiles and amphibians in order to slow their activity for capturing images. This is extremely damaging to their body and may even cause death, not in front but after you have moved on from the spot.

Remedy:

Capture images of reptiles and amphibians in their natural habitats without handling or moving them. Work with an ethical herpetologist or guide to ensure that no harm comes to wildlife.

Issue 5: Speeding in wildlife habitats

Impact:

Driving fast to sight a animal or to exit the national park before the gate shuts, not only frightens animals but can lead in animals getting run over. Although speeding is strictly not allowed in wildlife areas, it is quite common to see.

Remedy:

Follow the speed limits. If there is no speed limit mentioned, try to keep low speeds (20 kmph) to make sure that there is decent time to stop the vehicle if an animal suddenly crosses your path. File complaints against drivers who speeds the vehicle.

Responsibility from publishers & editors

We think that it is a responsibility of publishers and editors of wildlife and photography magazines or books, as well as social media pages and Facebook groups, to ensure that their audience meet ethical standards before publishing their images. Photos that are problematic should not be accepted.

Conclusion

We believe that following these rules and sharing them with every wildlife and nature photographers will improve the well being of wildlife and natural habitats. In this field, a photographer must have a good mind and, when in doubt, nature and wildlife should always get the profit of doubt.

Let’s enjoy nature responsibly!