Foam Paintings

I’ve seen photos over the years where a photographer has managed to capture the patterns of swirling foam at the base of a waterfall.  Rocky Mountain waterfalls don’t seem to lend themselves to this sort of imagery–the water usually isn’t dark brown to set off the foamy bubbles, the waterfall is too big and crashing to form foam, or the waterfall plunges into a deep, inaccessible canyon.

I was delighted to discover the perfect conditions for swirling foam “paintings with motion” while on Vancouver Island recently.  A local took me and two others to a series of “secret” waterfalls (not marked on any maps but if you know where to park, you can follow a well-defined path to them).

I love using a slow shutter speed with moving water–you’re never quite sure what the camera is going to capture, and even shooting the same composition in sequence can give different results as the water makes random different moves.