How to Take Waterfall Pictures

Beautiful waterfall pictures don’t just happen, whether you use a DSLR camera, Iphone, or any other smartphone. This article will show you how beautiful pictures of waterfalls are possible to take, even with a cell phone.

Waterfalls have to be one of nature’s most beautiful wonders, and with the right phone camera techniques, you can capture their beauty and movement like you never have before. We are not going to complicate this. I want to stick with the basics and provide you information you can immediately go out and improve your waterfall pictures with. So now, I will share with you the three most important tips for taking great pictures of waterfalls with a cell phone camera.
Firstly, you need to get a better camera for your phone. What do I mean by that? Well, the cameras are hardware that is built into your camera. I am going to use the example of an Iphone, but the same principles apply to an Android phone as well. What you can change however, is the software that you use to adjust all of the camera settings. There are many free apps that allow you to gain full manual control of your iphone camera and take it far beyond what the native application does.

 

Find a Good Smartphone Camera Application

 

The program I will highlight, although, like I said there are many, many camera apps, is called “Manual Cam”. This can be found in the App store. Once downloaded and launched, you are in a new camera world from the native app. This app is intended to allow you to change the settings of the phone camera as you would in a DSLR camera. Waterfall pictures are going to be so much easier with this app, as you will soon see.

Get a Smartphone Tripod for Waterfall Pictures

 

The second most important tool you will need, and this may or may not cost you some money, is a good phone tripod that will hold your phone steady as you take your pictures, because we are going to slow down the shutter of the phone camera to where hand holding it will be impractical, unless you can find a nice tree to brace to, or you can build your own tripod with rocks. I highly suggest you invest in a small tripod made for your phone. These can be had on Amazon for $10 to $20, which is very reasonable.
The third tip is that you have to be patient when taking pictures of waterfalls. You have to be willing to experiment and try many different methods until you find the one that works for you. What works for me may not work perfectly for you. I will show you my technique below and you can see my work. You can then use that as a starting point for the waterfall pictures that you create.

 

Instructions for Taking Pictures of Waterfalls

 

Step-by-Step Instructions;

1. Stabilize your phone. Find a good angle to take pictures of your waterfall and setup your tripod with your phone attached. Don’t be afraid to try several different angles, even from behind the waterfall, if you can get there! If you choose not to buy a tripod, find a way to place your phone using a tree, branches or rocks in such a way that it will not move during your picture taking. I am not responsible if your phone goes into the drink though! I still think a tripod is the best way.
2. Setup and launch your camera phone application. Once it is started, frame your image and zoom in or out. Using a combination of adjustments, you will adjust your ISO down to between 25 and 100, depending on the lighting. If you use an Iphone, the aperture is fixed, so you will then use the shutter speed adjust to set your camera between 1 second and 1/30th of a second. Use the exposure adjust to adjust the brightness. If your camera app has a timer delay, set that up as well, so that by the time the camera takes the picture you will not be touching the camera and no shaking will occur.
3. So now, take the picture by pressing the shutter and wait. Review each picture and make adjustments accordingly. Take a wide variety of pictures with different shutter settings. you never know which ones you will end up liking. It is often hard to tell on a small phone display. If you took your pictures in JPG mode, you can download them later into your favorite phone or computer editor and adjust the brightness, sharpness, color and contrast.

So, there you have it, a quick tutorial on taking pictures of waterfalls with any smartphone. I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. Feel free to link back to it or favorite it on your device. Also, visit my website, naturestickers.com to find waterfall stickers as well as other beautiful nature stickers. Thanks for reading!
Paul Knudtson