I took this shot of Cedar Falls a couple of years ago. Cedar Falls, in Petit Jean State Park, is one of the most well-known waterfalls in Arkansas. At 95 feet high, it is one of the tallest continuously flowing waterfalls in the state. After a good rainfall, the amount of water that flows over the top can be incredible.
I have photographed Cedar Falls numerous times, but I had never quite been able to time my trips to take advantage of the rains until this visit. I could hear the roar of the flowing water long before I actually arrived.
Because of the distance between the waterfall and my shooting location, I could have used an aperture of f/8 or f/11 and maintained sufficient depth of field to ensure everything in the image was sharp. However, because I wanted to photograph the smooth flow of water, I needed to shoot at the slowest shutter speed I could obtain which required me to use an aperture of f/22 to give me a shutter speed of 0.6 seconds. I would have liked an even longer shutter speed, somewhere in the 5 to 10 second range, but achieving a shutter speed that slow under that day’s lighting conditions would have required the use of a neutral density filter.
Settings: Canon 5D Mk II, 47mm, 0.6 sec, f/22