This photograph was made at the Tat Sae Waterfalls (also called Tad Sae), tucked along a tributary of the Nam Khan River in Luang Prabang Province, Laos. The falls sit about 18 kilometers southeast of Luang Prabang and a short walk from the small village of Bak En. Getting there felt quiet and unhurried, the kind of place that invites you to stay awhile.
That’s exactly what I did.
I spent an entire day here photographing the waterfalls, moving slowly from pool to pool, listening to the water and watching how the light shifted through the jungle canopy. Just before this trip, I had picked up a few new ND filters in Bangkok and was eager to really put them to use. Tat Sae was the perfect classroom—soft, layered falls, constant movement, and endless variations of flow and texture.
Long exposure photography has a way of forcing patience. You can’t rush it. You wait, adjust, wait again, and let the scene settle into something that feels right. By the end of the day my clothes were wet and my memory cards were full—but more importantly, I felt completely present.
This image is one of the frames I walked away proud of. Not because it’s dramatic or grand, but because it represents a full day of learning, experimenting, and letting a place teach me something new. It was only a few months earlier that i learned how use the settings on my camera for this when I met a friend in Melbourne who taught me…here I began to perfect it!