High Water, Hard Times

Hard Times? The water was high and the current stronger than normal on this wilderness Adirondack river when I saw this from my canoe. On top of that, dark clouds covered the sky all day and rained on me on and off, and now it was past sunset. A year ago, I might have headed for my tent. But this year I was equipped to shoot with image-stabilization, and a sensor that could handle ISO 1250 without generating lots of noise. Still, the leaves in the water were moving fast, and the shutter speed would have to be slow. So I thought I might try to capture some of the motion of the current with blurry leaves speeding past the spray of wet grass. I wedged the canoe into a tangle of branches and hunched down, braced my elbows on the gunwale; I put my mind and breathing into rifle shooting mode for a long exposure.

I got shots of the sharp grass and blurry moving leaves that I expected, but my favorite of the bunch was this one, where the maple leaf got stuck momentarily. I think it hides the efforts of the photographer, and simply concentrates on the subject. To me, a photograph that is all about the subject is always better than one which makes the viewer think about the photographer's equipment or techniques. That's why I had to tell this long story; you aren't normal viewers, so maybe I can get some sympathy for what I did to get this shot.

The leaves are centered more than I would normally want, but I was not willing to crop out the faint reflections. Does it work?

Canon 5D2; Canon 24-105mm.
f/4 @ 1/8 sec.; ISO 1250
Semi-hand-held (resting elbows on gunwales)