This week's photography challenge?  Water, water everywhere!  Find something watery to photograph -- a fountain, a stream, the beach, the swimming pool or even some rather photogenic ice!  If it's watery, then it's a winner.

When photographing water, you have two distinct options that will give you completely different results.  The first is to freeze the action by using a high speed -- use the running man setting if you're in auto or adjust your shutter speed to something very fast if you're in manual.  This will catch the water frozen in time - great for catching the individual water droplets as your kids run through the sprinkler or your dog shakes off after a swim.

The second is to take a long exposure shot, which captures the flow of the water and its movement.  This is great for waterfalls, fountains and streams.  For this, you'll need to set your ISO as low as it goes and manually lengthen the exposure to much longer than a normal shot -- anywhere from 1/10th of a second to a second or two for water.  Of course that normally means you're going to get a completely white-washed photo, even if your aperture is small (the highest f-number for your lens).  There are two ways around that problem: either shoot water in dark conditions, like streams under a canopy of trees with no direct sunlight, or shoot with a neutral density (ND) filter.  This is a grey filter that will block a certain amount of light so you can shoot something in sunlight as if it were much darker.  You'll also need a tripod or other method of holding the camera stable -- there is no way you can stand perfectly still for a second, especially if your camera has some weight to it!  If you happen upon a great set-up for a shot but don't have your tripod with you, look for something that can hold your camera, like a fencepost, a boulder or something else flat and stable.

Try either option this week and upload your photo to the photo gallery here at Two Peas.  Be sure to tick the box for this week's challenge so your photo has a shot at being chosen this week!  Check Mellypea's blog to see which photo is chosen.