Long exposure photography is a genre where you intentionally increase the exposure time to blur certain parts of the image but there is also night sky photography or other night photography where long exposure can be made to capture as much light as possible. When you capture long exposure images depending on the time of the day and amount of light, you may need to increase the exposure times and sometimes use an ND or Grad-ND filter to lengthen the exposure times.
Besides using ND filters, you will also need accessories like a stable tripod and a remote release to avoid camera shakes. Long exposure photography can be applied to many genre of photography besides the landscape photography where this technique is more commonly used. In this article, we have put together a bunch of tutorials for you to get an understanding of long exposure photography and improve your skills.
When capturing long exposure images, a few factors need to be kept in mind. The light in the location and how it is illuminating the subject, the time of day and what the end results would be, stabilising the camera, using the right settings based on the light and other elements, etc. Besides, you will need to use required accessories to get the best results. Check out these four easy to follow tips that will help make your long exposure photos successful.
If you are looking for a few more quick tips on capturing long exposure images, the above article has a few tips on the factors and settings you need to consider for good long exposure shots. There is also a useful chart that will help you to calculate your applied settings for normal light situations into the language of long-exposure photography.
Capturing long exposure during the day time can be quite tricky because the light can be bright in most situations and you will need to cut down light based on how long you need the exposure time to be. This is where ND filters come in handy and they come in various strengths. Check out the above article to learn how to use an ND filter for day time long exposure photography.
Here are some more handy tutorials:
Architectural elements can be great subjects in a long exposure photograph. If shot under the right light conditions and other elements in the frame like clouds or light trails architectural structures can lead to very interesting photographs. The above article is a quick guide on long exposure architectural photography.
Just like how you capture long exposure photographs during the day time, you can capture stunning long exposures at night too. Remember that you will definitely need a tripod and a shutter release to capture sharp images without any blur due to camera shake.
Night time photography can be interesting if you add a dynamic element to the frame. If you can safely photograph the light trails from traffic or from other interesting subjects like a carousel or a Ferris wheel, these can add visual interest and a story telling factor to the image. Here are some quick tips in the article above.
Long exposure photography is so fascinating that it does not stop with capturing just light trails, moving water or clouds, star trails and so on, but can also be extended to capture sun trails. Here is an article that shares the work of photographer Kristian Saks and the process of how he captures these images.
Now if you are a street photographer, you are surely missing out on some creative photography if you do not capture long exposure street photos. Yes, long exposure is a great way to add a dynamic element to street photos and will help you to capture intriguing photos. The above article will help you with some tips to capture long exposure street photos.
There are times when we capture long exposure images that we think are technically perfect but the results may be very disappointing. The most common mistakes are camera shakes, colour shifts, noise, diffraction, internal reflection, etc. The article above will help you understand why these mistakes can happen and how you can rectify them.
Some situations will help some photographers capture long exposure images by just handholding their camera if they have a somewhat steady hand. But when you become quite serious about this craft and look to capture perfect and sharp photos, you will need to invest in some very essential gear. Here is what you need to capture the best long exposure shots both during the day and at night.
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