Great Smoky Mountains, Tennessee, USA

Want to learn to shoot pictures like these?  Check out my new HDR tutorial!

One of the many cool things about my vacation is that I got a lot of opportunities to shoot running water.  I'd read a lot about the different things you could do in terms of motion blur, but I'd never had much opportunity to try them out. I can see why some photographers make it a specialty -- it's a hell of a lot of fun.  I learned a lot from the experience.

This photo is of a falls called "The Sinks" in Tennessee.  I've seen various photos of it at different water levels from almost dry to covering all the boulders (from the photos it looks like people raft over this when it's flowing well enough).  Despite the incredible amount of rainfall that had been occuring in the area, the levels were relatively low although I like that because the boulders themselves are beautiful and it allowed me to have a nice mix of rocks and water.

One thing I've come away with from shooting waterfalls:  I really need to get a neutral density filter.  It would enable me to have longer shutter speeds to make the water even more smooth and silky-looking.  I could also use an ND filter to more easily do fill flash in broad day light.