How to Photograph Stunning Waterfalls

Twice a month we revisit some of our reader favorite posts from throughout the history of Phototuts+. This tutorial was first published in September, 2009.

Waterfalls are some of the most beautiful natural features you will ever get the opportunity to photograph. But though they can look simply stunning, photographing waterfalls is not easy to do well. How do you avoid your photos being too dark? How do you deal with clipping in the water? How do you compose your photos to capture the authentic beauty of the scene?

In this tutorial, nature photography expert Steve Berardi shares his best tips for photographing waterfalls.

Photographing waterfalls isn't hard, but it does involve a lot of little tricks and techniques. This tutorial will focus on how to get that silky water effect and how to get the balanced light that helps bring out the contrast you usually find around waterfalls.

The key to getting a silky water effect is to use a slow shutter speed, so most of the techniques described below revolve around this simple idea.