Capturing ‘natural looking’ waves

Blurry water - you either love it or loath it. I love it.

To render moving water milky, the right exposure time is essential ; too fast and the water can look messy. A good rule of thumb is to select a shutter speed of around one second or longer. This should create an attractive level of blur. Even lengthier exposures will create more atmospheric, surreal results.

In order to generate the longest exposure time for the available light, select your DSLR's lowest ISO together with the lens's smallest aperture (eg f/22 or f/32). ln low light, achieving a lengthy exposure is relatively easy, with exposure times naturally longer. However, when the Iight is good, it is not often possible to select a sufficiently slow shutter speed without overexposing the image. The solution is to use a Neutral Density (ND) filter.

The stronger the density of the ND filter, the more light it absorbs, the longer the exposure and the greater the level of blur. For extreme effects, Lee Filters' 'Big Stopper' (ten-stops) can generate exposure times of several minutes, requiring the use of your camera's Bulb setting and a remote release. When shooting water's movement using long exposures, every image will be different. Sometimes the difference will be great; sometimes subtle. Take a sequence of images and decide later which one is best.

Source: The essential guide to outdoor photography