In the spray

A second waterfall, and a second vertical film: this one close up, through the spray and the ferns that grow in it.

Filming in spray

Spray is a lens's worst enemy. Every few seconds a fine mist of water lands on the glass and softens the image. We filmed in short bursts: wipe the lens, film for fifteen seconds, step back, wipe again. It took twenty minutes to get twenty clean seconds.

The ferns are the reason we stayed. They grow right at the edge of the falls, and they move in the wind the water makes. Put them in the foreground, slightly out of focus, and suddenly the waterfall has depth.

The sound

Waterfalls are loud and boring to listen to: a flat roar with no shape. We recorded the sound from further away, where you can hear individual splashes and the wind in the ferns, and used that instead.

Record the sound you want people to hear, not the sound that was there.

Lina Farouk

Ferns as a frame

Close foreground objects are one of the easiest ways to make a flat image feel deep. Here, the ferns do three jobs at once: they frame the water, they show the wind the falls create, and they tell you how close the camera is to the spray. Without them, this is a picture of a waterfall. With them, you are standing next to one.

We focused on the water, not the ferns, and let the leaves go soft. If the ferns were sharp, your eye would stop on them.

How long we stayed

About an hour, of which twenty minutes were filming and forty were drying ourselves and the camera. A microfibre cloth, a rain cover and a bin bag are the three things we always pack for waterfalls. The camera survived. Our socks did not.