Yoga on the falls
I had a shoot with Shan the other day at one of Hamilton’s many waterfalls. Shan wanted to have photos of himself doing yoga at Albion Falls. Albion Falls is a great place to shoot because it’s big and has plenty of dramatic platforms at different levels. We had beautiful weather for the shoot. It was warm, and the sun ducked in and out from behind the occasional cloud to provide a variety of interesting lighting conditions. We hiked down the side of the escarpment to reach the bottom of the waterfall’s bowl. Then, Shan climbed up to the various terraces of the falls to do yoga poses while I shot from on top of some big rocks below. The rushing sound of the water and peaceful surroundings made it a very pleasant and easy shoot. What a pleasure it is to shoot photos of people doing what they are passionate about.
Technically, the shoot was pretty simple. I shot in aperture priority mode so I could control the depth of field. I would decrease the aperture for some of the shots to lengthen the shutter speed, giving a little more blur to the fast-moving water. A stabilized lens helps in this situation so you can shoot hand-held at long focal lengths without worrying about camera shake. Shooting at the right time of day really helps. We were there in the late afternoon, when the sun was still high enough to get over the lip of the waterfall and into our shooting area, but still low enough to provide a nice rim light on Shan, and a soft glow to the water droplets. It wasn’t quite golden hour, but still late enough for the atmosphere to filter out those ugly UV rays.
