Long Exposure Photography

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Long exposure photography is a lot of fun and a great way to achieve some amazing photos. You can make rushing, mountain stream water look soft and milky, make a lake look perfectly flat, and ocean waves look like surreal fog.

Long exposure photography is also a lot of fun at night. You can create streaking automobile lights, star trails, or cool light patterns from lights shimmering off of bodies of water.

Equipment Needed

Camera

You will need a camera that will let you adjust your shutter speed to control the amount of light that enters the camera. Basically you will need a DSLR camera.

Neutral Density Filter

Neutral Density (ND) filters are a must for long exposure photography. ND filters come in a variety of types, but adjustable filters work the best for long exposure work. With an adjustable filter you simply turn the filter and it gets darker or lighter depending on which way you turn the filter. Long exposure photography requires a lot of tinkering to get the timing just right. Adjustable ND filters will allow you to tinker without changing the filter. It would be a real pain in the butt to work with fixed darkness filters, because you would be constantly changing filters.

One word of caution when using adjustable ND filters. Make sure you stay within the parameters of your adjustable ND filter or you will get some strange looks. Normally adjustable ND filters have a series of marks on the side of them for reference. Just make sure you stay inside the marks to achieve the best results.

Tripod

A good, solid tripod is a must for long exposure photography. The camera can’t move at all while the shutter is open to keep from blurring the photo.

I learned this lesson the hard way when I was in Cairns, Australia trying to get a cool photo of lights shimmering off the harbor water at night from a pier. There were a lot of people walking on the pier at the time, which was shaking the pier just enough to blur my photos. After a frustrating hour trying to get the shot I finally realized that I would have to come back to the pier when all the tourists were in bed.

Timing Device

The jarring of pushing the click button is often enough to mess up a photograph. To achieve crystal clear photos you will need some help triggering the shutter hands free. Cameras generally have a timer built into them that will allow you to click the button, wait 5 seconds for the camera to stabilize, and then the shutter will move.

Although the camera timer works in a pinch, I prefer a remote device. With a remote device you can trigger your camera totally hands free eliminating the chance of any movement to mess up your photo.

Movement Emphasis vs. Movement Smoothing

Now that we have our gear figured out it is time to get to work. When we approach a subject we want to determine what effect we are going for to achieve a spectacular photo.

Movement Emphasis

Emphasis is normally used on subjects that are constantly moving like rushing water, clouds, or automobile lights. To create a look we normally don’t see we will use movement emphasis to make the water, clouds, or other moving subjects really pop.

Movement Smoothing

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