11 Long Exposure Photography
This post is written by Laurent Dambies, a microstock photographer and blogger of Microstock Experiment.
You’ve probably came across these dreamy landscape pictures with silky water and have asked yourself how these pictures were taken: these are long exposure pictures that can be obtained, but not always, in a really cloudy day by closing the aperture. On a sunny day however, the shutter speed will probably be too high to have a motion blurred effect.
Mountain stream by Laurent Dambies (40 seconds at f:22)
Forth rail bridge by Steward Hardy (13 seconds at f:22)
Sunset on False Bay, South Africa by Steve Crane (120 seconds at f:8)
Beach at Azenhas do Mar, Lisbon by Pedro Moura Pinheiro (62 seconds at f:11)
The trick to take such pictures is to use neutral density filters (a.k.a ND filters). These grey filters are calibrated according to the amount of light they let through: while a ND8 filter gives a 3 f-stops reduction, you will get up to 9 f-stops reduction with a ND400.
Using ND filters does not come without flaws such as vignetting, color change, noise, hot pixels so postprocessing is often needed to correct these. Of course a good tripod is paramount and a cable release can come handy for bulb exposures.
Scottish seascape by Southsideimages (32 seconds at f:13)
Old ship wreck just south of Costa Teguise, Lanzarote by Southsideimages (30 seconds at f:29)
Long exposure pictures are not restricted to water and can give also interesting effects on moving clouds.
Glen Canyon, Arizona by Laurent Dambies (25 seconds at f:20)
Harbour in Schotschekloof, Cape Town by Steve Crane (67 seconds at f:22)
Tanah Lot, Bali, Indonesia by Beat Küng (8 seconds at f:11)
Dicky Beach, Queensland, Australia by Matthew Stewart (10 seconds at f:11)
Sawtell, New South Wales, Australia by Matthew Stewart (20 seconds at f:11)




Wednesday, February 10, 2010 at 2:59AM
Reader Comments (4)
Just love the ship wreck photo from the coastline near Costa Teguise in Lanzarote!
love the B&W ones :)
Beach at Azenhas do Mar, Lisbon by Pedro Moura Pinheiro (62 seconds at f:11) This is a truely inspiring picture, I'm actually salivating as I peer into the reflection of the rock!
Forth rail bridge by Steward Hardy (13 seconds at f:22) The colour contrast between the sky and the water is hypnotising. I have travelled to Fife, the bridge looks tiny in the photo in comparison to how I remember travelling across it. Magnificent picture though.
Awesome.... !!!