One of the advantages of using a digital versus a film camera is the ability to experiment with different subjects, compositions, and photographic settings and techniques at no additional cost.
With film photography, every frame of exposed film had a cost because those exposed frames had to be developed. The price per frame wasn’t usually much. But, if you shot a lot of film, the cost added up quickly. Because of this, I would rarely experiment or try different things. I only tripped the shutter when I had a pretty good idea in my mind of what I was going to capture on film.
With digital cameras, you can take as many pictures as you want. The cost for a hundred pictures is the same as it is for one. Want to see what a slight change in camera position or a camera setting will do to the image? Now, you can and at no cost to you, as they say in TV commercials.
This ability to try different things cost-free is what led to this picture. My wife and I decided to make a short getaway on a nice November weekend. We really had no plan in mind and weren’t really sure where we wanted to go.
Having seen many pictures of the Cossatot River over the years, I suggested we visit the Cossatot River State Park-Natural Area, or, more specifically, Cossatot Falls, located in western Arkansas. So, with a hotel reservation made, a change of clothes in the trunk, and our dog in the backseat, we piled into the car, and off we went.
We arrived at Cossatot Falls about mid-afternoon. The lighting wasn’t quite ideal, and a gusty wind had begun. Refusing to be deterred, we got out and started down the small trail to the river.
Arriving at the area of the falls, I began taking photographs, but the lighting was too contrasty to get anything that was really usable. I began looking around for other subjects, but nothing was jumping out at me. Frustrated, I began mentally complaining about the conditions, especially the wind.
That’s when a brief moment of inspiration hit me. I began to wonder what it would look like if I used a relatively short shutter speed to photograph the leaves blowing in the wind.
When the idea first occurred to me, I fell back into my film photography mindset and was a little hesitant to give it a try. But, then I realized I had nothing to lose but a couple of megabytes on my memory card, and even those wouldn’t be lost once I reformatted the card. I really had no excuse for trying something different.
My location wasn’t conducive to using a tripod, so I took the camera off the tripod and handheld it. Setting the camera to aperture priority, which is what I typically use, I selected an aperture of f/16 and an ISO of 100 and let the camera choose the shutter speed, which ended up being 1/13 of a second. Then, it was just a matter of waiting for the wind to pick up and tripping the shutter.
What I like about this photograph is the abstraction of the tree and leaves that creates an image that is more about motion and color and less about the tree and leaves.
Had I been using film, this picture would likely never have happened. But, with digital, I have no qualms about experimenting with different things, and that has opened up whole new worlds in the realm of photography.