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)