How to take long exposure photography?

This paper will outline an eight-step long exposure landscape photography course, which will help to visualize the beautiful and well-planned unique images you need to capture and make you satisfied.

Long exposure is the real work of photography; When the shutter is open, a usually static and dreary scene can become a dynamic masterpiece. In this case, what you see and the final result are usually two completely different things, and the result is often amazing. But capturing beauty is challenging. So you need to focus on making a long-exposure landscape shot? Let's discuss it again.

1, choose the right position.

Before shooting the scenery, you need to decide what kind of lens to shoot and what kind of environment to shoot-grass plain, sea view or busy highway.

Long exposure photography is about capturing and transforming motion within a frame. Take some time to decide what you want to capture and what kind of action you want to emphasize. Rolling waves? Swaying grass? Cloud?

Take time to imagine what your scene will look like, which parts are static and which parts are flowing.

2. Wait patiently for the right time

Long exposure, on their very basic premise, requires one of two things to work normally. Whether it is very dim lighting conditions, such as prime time, early or late-or the modifier added by the camera reduces the light entering through the lens.

One of the reasons you need it is to keep the shutter open longer and monopolize the corner of the exposure triangle. When the normal amount of light irradiates the sensor of the camera for a long time, the exposure can be ensured. Therefore, you need to change one of the variables to reduce the amount of light.

Step 3 choose the perfect lens

Of course, there is no hard and fast rule about which lens you need to use, but traditionally, wide-angle lenses are used for landscape shooting to broaden your horizons and translate the sense of expansion.

Can you shoot the scenery with a standard 50 mm lens? Sure! But in order to maximize the openness of the scene, please consider using something broader. Remember, the more you capture in a frame, the more motion it contains.

4. Bring the right equipment.

When we are discussing the shooting plan, now is the best time to consider what equipment to use to extend the exposure time. It happens that this is the same equipment as other long exposure shooting.

For any landscape photographer, tripod is very valuable equipment, and long exposure is an absolute requirement. The exposure of several seconds required to produce motion in the image requires a stable base of the camera. The slightest movement may lead to blur, which will be enlarged with a longer shutter time. Buy a good and sturdy tripod and make sure that nothing will blow or touch the equipment during operation.

Another important accessory in this case is the remote shutter release. For any landscape photographer, there is no excuse, because they can find it on the camera model of about $65,438+00. These versions connect to your camera and allow you to activate the shutter without touching the camera body. This keeps the vibration of the shutter when it clicks at an absolute minimum.

5. Use the correct camera settings

Because you use a long exposure time to pull out this type of lens, you need to adjust the other parts of the exposure triangle. Usually, this means that you need to stop the aperture as much as possible, while maintaining clarity and minimizing ISO settings. These two settings will allow you to increase the exposure time long enough to capture the motion in the image.

As usual, raw. This will capture as much data as possible and allow you to edit the file non-destructively later. When shooting in RAW format, there is no need to fiddle with white balance, because it can be adjusted in post-production.

If the white balance is set when shooting, it is usually a good choice to choose the daylight preset or the self-defined white balance setting, which can balance the extreme warmth encountered at sunset, and vice versa, in terms of color temperature.

Step 6 focus on your goals

When you need equipment and settings, it's time to spend some time assembling your lens. What are you grabbing? The movement of water like ocean surfing? Adjust your composition so that there is more water in it than the sky. Do you want to pay attention to the movement of clouds in the sky? Then pay more attention to this part of the scene in your frame to highlight it.

7. Imagine and predict movement

Shooting a moving scene, trying to capture the movement needs some foresight, which is different from aiming at the target by observing the target position when shooting.

For example, in order to catch the ebb and flow of the waves hitting the waves, we need to know the end position of the surf line, and then start to retreat to the ocean and make a reasonable combination. Observing the motion of the object will help to predict its display position in the final image. It's always worthwhile to plan ahead!

8. Enhance the aesthetic feeling of post-production

Learn to be good at post-production process. Images exposed for a long time will only attract attention because of their inherent characteristics, but it is very important to spend time editing to enhance the beauty of your photos in the camera.

Since you started shooting with a low ISO, you may not have to deal with noise reduction. After exposure and tone processing, all details between you and the final image will be sharpened.