500px / Blog / Tutorial: Long exposure photography

http://500px.com/blog/650/tutorial-long-exposure-photography

Tutorial: Long exposure photography

Published by Matt Kloskowski May 23rd 2013 Hey everyone. Matt Kloskowski here from Kelby Media Group. First off, thanks so much to everyone over at 500px for giving me the platform of their blog today. What I'm writing about here (long exposure photograph) is actually something that 500px's photos inspired me to do a couple of years ago.

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500px / Blog / Tutorial: Long exposure photography

http://500px.com/blog/650/tutorial-long-exposure-photography

Albany Covered Bridge Matt Kloskowski

How The Camera Sees Things

See, we probably all know that our camera doesn't see things the way we see it right? Shadows, highlights, etc Well another way the camera sees differently is motion. Given enough light and the right conditions your camera will freeze motion. Sometimes, like in the case of a sports photo, that's exactly what we want. But other times, say when photographing water, that may not be what we want because we want to show motion. We don't see water frozen in time, but rather it's always moving.

Enter Long Exposure Photography

For me, a couple years ago I noticed a surge in the posting of long exposure photos. People were putting 3, 6 or even 10-stop neutral density filters on their cameras to slow shutter speeds. The result was this beautiful long exposure photo where clouds, water and lights had a beautiful streaky motion-like feeling to them. Personally, I love photographing the water. Beaches, waterfalls, lakes, streams, you name it. But I'm not a huge fan of choppy water. I love reflections and smooth silky water. So for me, long exposure photography was the answer.

Adding Motion
I'm primarily a landscape photography. In most landscape photos everything is still right? One of the other things I love about landscapes and long exposure photography though is that you get to introduce motion into an otherwise static scene. Chances are, when you were taking that beautiful photo outdoors time wasn't frozen. But our photos don't typically show that. With long exposure photos though, you can incorporate striking sharp and crisp areas of landscapes with movement in water or clouds. Here's an example. I took this photo in Bandon, OR. When I saw all of the pilings and patterns along with the water I thought it would make a great scene. I put my camera on the tripod and set it to Aperture Priority mode and let the camera do the rest of the thinking. This is what I got after a 1/25 second exposure.

First, the choppy water is distracting. There's too many ripples, texture and highlights that pull your attention away from the subject of the photo - the old decaying pilings. Plus, there's junk in the water like sticks, leaves, and other little distractions that just make it not pleasing to look at. But after putting on my 10-stop neutral density filter (I use the Lee Big Stopper) and letting the shutter speed go to 30 seconds, this is the photo I got.

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500px / Blog / Tutorial: Long exposure photography

http://500px.com/blog/650/tutorial-long-exposure-photography

The ripples have smoothed out, we have some degree of reflections and there's an overall peaceful feeling to the photo. The clouds even start to get a little streaky which makes makes the whole scene feel like it's moving even though it's not.

Enter Photoshop To Finish Things Off

As much as I like to get things right in camera, sometimes there's things we simply can't do. In my example above, the 10-stop ND filter did a great job of smoothing the water out. That's something that would be nearly impossible to do in Photoshop. However, the clouds, while kinda streaky, still don't have as much motion in them as I'd like. We've all seen those beautiful clouds moving through the air and the feeling it gives us. 30 seconds just wasn't long enough to capture the movement here though. That's where I little bit of Photoshop work comes in. First I opened the photo in Photoshop and made a selection of the sky using the Quick Selection Tool.

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500px / Blog / Tutorial: Long exposure photography

http://500px.com/blog/650/tutorial-long-exposure-photography

Then I pressed Cmd-J (PC: Ctrl-J) to duplicate that area of the sky on to it's own layer in the Layers panel and Cmd-clicked (PC: Ctrl-clicked) to put a selection around the same sky area again.

Next, I went to Filter > Blur > Radial Blur. I changed the Blur method to Zoom and increased the Amount to 50 percent.

Lastly, I dragged the area in the Blur Center part of the dialog downward so the clouds would look like they were coming at us across the sky.

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500px / Blog / Tutorial: Long exposure photography

http://500px.com/blog/650/tutorial-long-exposure-photography

The result is that streaky effect we get in clouds when we leave the shutter open long enough to capture their movement. To me, it was a great finishing effect on the photo and it gave the photo the feeling I had when I was there creating it.

Thanks
I hope this sparks a few ideas for you when it comes to your photography. Long exposure photos have really become very popular lately. And with digital, we can see the results of experimenting with longer or shorter exposures right on the back of the camera. And you don't even need to go as far as a 10 stop ND filter. Give it a try with 3 or 6 stop filters as well. As an outdoor shooter, I think it offers you a whole new area of creativity, because we're typically so used to shooting static scenes with no movement. For me, long exposures bring the best of both worlds together. Take care everyone. Thanks for stopping by and if you'd like to read more feel free to follow me over on my blog at www.mattk.com. For more 500px tutorials check out Dreamy Great Gatsby Portraits.

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Zeynep Ugurdag about 2 hours ago enlightening great tutorial, thank you for sharing...

Lensman Kc about 2 hours ago Thanks :)

Niroshan Sthapit about 3 hours ago great! thanks for sharing!

Donna Read about 3 hours ago Thank you so much for explaining it in simple terms!! I think i get it now!

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500px / Blog / Tutorial: Long exposure photography

http://500px.com/blog/650/tutorial-long-exposure-photography

Norman Garcia about 3 hours ago Great tutorial! Thanks!

about 4 hours ago thanks :)

Catherine Houston about 4 hours ago Thanks for sharing!

about 5 hours ago

Bhavesh Bhagat about 5 hours ago I would rather use very high f-number and let camera shutter open for much longer and get the motion blur of theclouds with out need of photoshop!

Fico Stein Montagne about 6 hours ago Very simple and well made tutorial, thank you!!

Dr Nasseem Malouf about 6 hours ago Well explained Matt. Keep the good work up. Tuts like this are valuable. Dr Nasseem M Malouf

David Peachey about 7 hours ago Very nice Thanks for the tutorial

ahmad hadidoun about 7 hours ago thanks for sharing

Tony Brown about 8 hours ago Re the 'How to use the filter'..... Buy oversize filters and tape them...... A cheaper solution than that 10 stop ND (is that a resin filter by the way? I'd avoid them like the plague especially the graduated type. might be to use 2 x pola screen filters. Fix the first and then rotate the second pola which effectively makes a variable ND.

Irma R. about 9 hours ago Nice tutorial. Thanks!

mike Delanzo about 9 hours ago Very Nice!! Thanks:-)

Herbert Stachelberger about 10 hours ago Helpful!

Yiannis Kaltseras about 10 hours ago Very nice, thanks!

Aaron Robinson about 10 hours ago Thanks for the radial filter idea, I shoot a lot of long exposures so that is really helpful!

Ivan Pellarini about 11 hours ago interesting! Thanks!

E Fromm about 12 hours ago Comment hidden

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500px / Blog / Tutorial: Long exposure photography

http://500px.com/blog/650/tutorial-long-exposure-photography

Jaro Miscevic about 13 hours ago Nice tutorial. Thanks!

Brian Argyle about 13 hours ago Sometimes, as in this, the IDEA is as important as all the little details. I think this tutorial accomplishes this and would motivate people to experiment with things. While there are undoubtedly other scenes, those with water, sky, traffic or crowds can benefit a lot from long exposures. One comment about water--if you are shooting a scene with boats, they will move around too much to be clear, so you may want to take both an 'instant' shot and a long exposure and merge the two. I saw a shot once of a crowded square in Italy, where the photographer had used a VERY long exposure, to the extent that NO people showed in the image--they had all moved on before the camera had a chance to register them... It was a neat effect.

Veronica van Peet about 14 hours ago Thank you!

iDruz Arsyad about 14 hours ago great tutorial...thank you :)

Aditi N about 14 hours ago Loved the tutorial! Thank you so much!!

Jose Ignacio Gil Blanco about 14 hours ago Thanks so much!

Maya Pik about 15 hours ago Thanks!

Hady El Khodary about 15 hours ago Thanks for Sharing, a very professional tutorial.

Ioana And Massimo about 15 hours ago great tutorial ! thanks so much

Ayman Fouad about 16 hours ago professional tutorial indeed .. thanks !

masaya kubo about 17 hours ago Thanks!

Alan Zart about 17 hours ago Very Good!

marv larson about 17 hours ago Thanks for yip

Benedict Hocson about 18 hours ago So where's the LE tutorial?

WAEL ONSY about 19 hours ago very nice and useful .. thanks a lot for sharing

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500px / Blog / Tutorial: Long exposure photography

http://500px.com/blog/650/tutorial-long-exposure-photography

Francesco Gola about 19 hours ago How can you state that this is a LE tutorial??? No words. :/

Andrea Verni about 19 hours ago This is NOT Photography, this is just Photoshopping ! I don't like it !

Alex Fleming about 20 hours ago fantastic very useful thanks :)

Saar Drahcir about 20 hours ago useful, inspiring thanks

Adarsh Hatwar about 20 hours ago Very good tutorial, the final image looks stunning.

Patrick Pedersen about 21 hours ago Wh inn Gods name do you tell people that they should go to. Photoshop and do motion blur there, see that you're a good friend of Kelby, thought this was a LE tutorial not a darn other Photoshop tutorial! I've been doing long exposures since over. 20 years back.

Christian Pabst about 23 hours ago beautiful pictures and a valueable idea; especially for the clouds - so it is not limited to water thanks for the inspiration, I will try have a good light and best wishes from Austria

s kant 1 day ago thanks for sharing -)

Souvik Debnath 1 day ago Thanks for the details...

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500px / Blog / Tutorial: Long exposure photography

http://500px.com/blog/650/tutorial-long-exposure-photography

T L Hng 1 day ago thanks U

Peter Hill 1 day ago I have to say I was expecting to read a tutorial on long exposure photography, as the title states, but was disappointed to read only one sentence describing this technique. There's a little bit more to it than "putting on my 10-stop neutral density filter (I use the Lee Big Stopper) and letting the shutter speed go to 30 seconds" and that's an understatement !!!! For starters, many people want the whole ND filter thingy explained to them, and would be surprised to learn it takes months and many dollars to actually acquire a Lee Big Stopper, and that to use one you also need to acquire a Lee filter holder, and a Lee Adaptor Ring that fits the diameter of the lens you wish to use, and that if that lens is a wide angle lens (most likely it is when shooting landscapes), the Adaptor Ring should be the WA variety to prevent vignetting. HOW you actually use the Lee Big Stopper, or for that matter ANY other ND filter (especially the screw-in variety like the Hoya ND x400), would have been also helpful to discuss in any basic tutorial.

Kinga Sorbn about 19 hours ago Agreed, I'd hoped to improve my technique, since I'm a beginner with long-exposure shots, but I already knew this...

Christer Hggqvist about 22 hours ago Peter, I agree with you this was not much of a tutorial. I have still not started using ND filters but is considering it and found this page http://www.redbubble.com/people/peterh111/journal/4421304-the-ultimate-guide-to-neutral-density-filters which is a lot more informative.

Martin Sheepwash 1 day ago Of course you need a holder for the ND filter, why is that an issue? there are many filter holder systems on the market, simper cheaper ones, helps to do things that cannot be achieved in the camera or photoshop, i dont care for the water looking like clouds stuff, clouds do that trick quite well, but this shot gives the water a leaden quality, heavy water.

Biker Blue 1 day ago you are right

Dian Leica 1 day ago great tutorial; nice sharing!!

Glen Orsak 1 day ago Excellent example. Simple description of technique. Great result!

Moin Anjum 1 day ago this rocked! Thank you Previous 1 2 Next

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