I Think I Can Do It!

Waterfall, Hug Point, Oregon

“Whether you think you can, or you think you can't--you're right.”
― Henry Ford

Knowing how good the image stabilization is that is built into my Olympus E-M5, I thought I could successfully make the image of the waterfall with blurring the water.  The exposure at F/14 would be about 1/3 second or so, but I was confident I could pull it off.  Is it crazy to make a handheld shot at that slow shutter speed?  Yes, but I think I can do it if I am very careful and my technique is flawless.

So, I set the camera at ISO 200, aperture at F/14, which dropped the shutter speed to 1/3 second, positioned myself in a stance similar to one you would use when shooting a pistol (body 45 deg. to the target with one foot in front and to the left and the other slightly behind and to the right), planted my elbows into my sides to form a triangle (forehead against eyepiece, two arms down and planted in my sides, then took a deep breath and let it out.  When I fully exhaled, I gently rolled my finger onto the shutter.  I had set the advance to continuous and fired off 6 frames.

Did I do it?  I looked at the frames on the LCD and they all looked very good.  My hopes were high that, indeed, I had done it!  Later that evening in the hotel, I looked at the 6 images on my 16" HD computer screen.  This would be the test.  Three were tack sharp and three just missed being tack sharp by a tiny bit. But even those would be usable if not enlarged to 1:1 or for making large prints.

Detail from image above at 1:1 (Pixel Level)

I thought I could do it and I did! Mind over matter, with a little help from technology.

Attitude is so important in everything we do.  We have choices from the moment we wake up in the morning until the time we go to bed.  We can choose to try our best or we can choose to convince ourselves that it can't be done and just walk away.  I choose to always be positive, try my best and find success.  You don't always succeed, but you owe yourself your best effort.

Without thinking I could make this image, it would not exist today.

Thanks for looking.  Enjoy!

Dennis Mook


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