Long Exposure, What are they?

This is a star trail, many images stacked together.

For this week I want to talk a little about long exposures and what exactly does that mean. The first thing I want to cover is what a long exposure means, typically a long exposure if when you have your shutter open for a longer period of time and you need a tripod to keep the camera from shaking to get a crisp image. You would use this technique if you wanted to capture water but you didn’t want to freeze its motion, you wanted to capture it while it was moving. In doing so you create this very silky look to the water. No if you where photographing you scene and it turns out you have to much light for the amount of time you want to leave the shutter open then you might need to ad what they call a Neutral density filter.  These filters help block the light from reaching the cameras sensor and therefor allow you to leave the shutter open for longer periods of time.  There are many different amounts of light that these filters block all the way up to one that blocks 10 stops of light. With a 10 stop filter you can leave the shutter open for minutes at a time without over exposing the image. The result on water would give it a very smooth spot where all the water is. For some things you don’t need the ND filters but when you decrease you shutter speed and you increased the F stop to where you want it and there is still to much light making the image over exposed then you need to get your ND Filters out.

Long Exposure and Sea Isle City, NJ

There are many different things you can shoot besides water. I like to shoot moving objects like speeding trains. Even speeding cars on a freeway. At might with a long exposer you could capture the cars lights going by . You can be very creative with your long exposures and make them a very art like image. I have shot water fireworks, moving objects all with a long exposer. Some of my images are below. For more tips feel free to ask questions. I would love to see some of the images you have created.

TBT Thursday Ambassador.

Another Sunrise image in Sea Isle, NJ