Long exposure photography can create some beautiful artwork out of ordinary scenes. Bodies of water become glass, and clouds become painterly waves in the sky. Here are some tips to get started in the endeavor.
Long exposure photography is a bit like a drug. The first time you do it, you're experimenting simply with aperture and shutter speed. Before you know it, you're throwing ND filters into the mix, then graduated ND filters and, well, the rabbit hole goes very deep. There are many steps to prepare, and if you make a mistake, it can take many minutes of exposure time to correct it. By then, the sunset or cloud formation you were trying to capture may be gone.
That's why, if you're interested in trying this technique, this video from landscape photographer Attilio Ruffo is worth a watch. After a one-year YouTube hiatus, he's back with a few tips to make sure you get started.
One of the things I never think about these days as a mirrorless photographer without an optical viewfinder is to cover up the optical viewfinder on your DSLR. In a moment where Ruffo admits he was in a rush, he had a beautiful shot of mountains that had light streaking across the center of the frame. The culprit? He forgot to cover his viewfinder. It's the little things that can make or break a shot.
I've often taken my best guess when dialing in long exposures, and usually, I get it wrong a couple of times. For Ruffo, he uses an app (I couldn't find the app he's using on the app store, but it appears to be similar in function to Long Exposure Calculator) that can take a "normal" exposure and then figure out what a long exposure would be based on the number of stops your ND filter is. Definitely something to add to the checklist, using these apps.
While I've been using the screw-in type filters, over the last few years more companies have released magnetic filters which make the process of attaching them much, much easier. This Freewell M2 Magnetic Quick Swap filter set would do the job a lot easier without the risk of bumping focus or focal length rings, as I often do when screwing a filter in.
Ruffo offers many more tips on finding just the right composition and editing photos in the video above, and it's worth watching as he goes through his process and how he arrives at the final product.
Do you have any long exposure photography tips of your own to add? Leave them in the comments below.
I was not expecting the final photo to be THAT minimalistic!