s46 Photo Challenge

People often associate long exposures (or long shutter speeds) with night photography. What is overlooked are the amazing photos you can get with longer shutter speeds, ranging from 1/15 of a second up to many hours. What’s more, these aren’t tricky, and don’t require sophisticated cameras and lenses. Because of the techniques associated with shooting at varying lengths of (longer) shutter speeds, I break them down into three categories: Shorter exposures, which go from about 1/20th of a second to several seconds, medium exposures, which go up to about a minute, and long exposures, which can be indefinitely long.

In order to override your camera’s auto exposure setting you will need to set your setting to Shutter Speed Priority. The way to do this varies by manufacturer but most commonly its an “S” on the thumb dial.

Technically, this isn’t rocket science. The challenge is the composition. Because things are in motion, it’s hard to frame your picture in real-time conditions that change so quickly, and deciding when to release the shutter. Expect to shoot many pictures of the same thing, hoping that one great shot will appear. One hint about composition is to pay attention to the direction of motion, since that will be the theme of the picture. Straight lines, curved motion, forward, backward. It’s all about leading the viewer’s eye from a starting point to an endpoint. It may be subtly implied, or very direct, but it’s the motion itself that you want to convey.

When shooting from a stationery position, something else in the scene must also be stationary, or the effect is lost. Hence, it is necessary to keep the lens stable during the exposure to keep those stationary objects still. For 1/8 of a second or so, one “can”, with enough practice, learn to be relatively still, but even then, it still requires repeated shooting. If you’re on a train, for example, you can use a tripod.

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