Hi everyone,

Here are a couple photos I took on a trip to the Pacific NW last spring. I think these do a decent job of demonstrating some of the concepts Justin touched on regarding shutter speed. 

Multnomah Falls - Oregon

Camera: Canon T3i / Aperture: f16 / Shutter speed: 1 sec ISO: 100 / Shot on manual mode

With this shot I wanted to add a silky motion blur to the waterfall, so I intentionally set my shutter speed to 1 second. I am pleased with the way this shot came out, but I would have liked to be able to push my shutter speed even slower to add more of a dramatic blur to the waterfall. Unfortunately it was a very bright day and I did not have any ND for my lens, so this was the slowest I could set my shutter without over exposing.

Crater Lake - Oregon

Camera: Canon T3i / Aperture: f8.0 / Shutter speed: 1/2500 sec ISO: 100 / Shot on aperture priority.

Freezing the subject's motion in this shot was sort of a happy accident. Since I was mostly shooting landscapes this day, I decided to set my camera to aperture priority and keep the f stop at 8.0 to keep my depth of field deep. This shot was taken around noon with no clouds in the sky, so the lighting conditions were super bright. To keep my shots properly exposed, my camera was choosing extremely fast shutter speeds of 1/1500 - 1/2500. When I saw this guy getting ready to jump off a cliff in to Crater Lake I knew didn't have time to set a manual exposure, so I just snapped a few shots with the settings I had already dialed in. The 1/2500 shutter speed made it possible to completely freeze the subject mid-air without seeing any motion blur.