A simple fun exercise is to play around with the settings on your camera and see what happens. The better educated you become, the more often “what happens” will be really cool. If you aren’t familiar with terms like “shutter speed” or “f/stop” a legend in the photography world wrote a post about it here.
Yeah, just kidding, that was my post.
A word to the wise. If you’re using a slideshow, the Word Press Reader Feature may not be teasing a potential follower with your beautiful photos.
Anyways, one fun thing to do is decreasing your “shutter speed.” This means instead of trying to freeze action, you are allowing anything that moves to become blurry. This isn’t a great idea with people or pets, but it can turn out pretty nifty if you’re shooting cars at dusk or running water like I was here.
The gallery thing is something I haven’t tried before so let me know what you think of it. The trick to long exposures is knowing what to adjust. Shutter speed is a fraction (oh no, fractions!) So 1/2500th of a second is very fast. That means the shutter only stays open for that long. This doesn’t let much light in so you shoot at a reasonably low f/stop, I used 3.5. (again, if this is greek check out my tutorials on f/stop and exposure speed.) When I dial that down to 1/40th of a second and 1/10th, we start getting a lot of light. The image would have been completely whited out if I hadn’t decreased the aperture size to f/16. (I cheat a bit and let auto ISO do some of the work for me.)
What you end up with is a smooth and silky flow of water that you wouldn’t be able to visualize with the naked eye. This was my first go at this so the pictures aren’t incredible but it was a lot of fun to do. I fully intend to try a few follow up trips to play around with this more. In the meantime here’s a top ten list with some of the best I’ve ever seen.
I love to hear from you. Let me know what you liked and didn’t like in today’s post in the comment below. Thanks for stopping by and God Bless You!
I miss my 35mm that was configured according to the Ansel Adams card chart. The f/stops, film speeds, and the multitude of lenses make me long for the “old” days, but I’ve been trying the world of digital and am using such a cheap starter camera that I can’t make too many decisions about the process. You’ve made me want to go on an old fashioned shoot where I did all the work and not the camera……………
Poor kids these days may never know what it’s like to turn all the knobs for themselves
Big Smile, was just out trying to get the “perfect” exotic flower shot and have to admit I was doing a lot of adjusting after all, at least what I was “allowed”
Thank you! This helps us a lot. I use the slideshow because the gallery uploads very slow whenever I click one.
Everything had advantages and disadvantages. The trick is learning them!
I did this in dusky light in winter on the great falls of the Potomac river, back when I was using a “real” Nikon SLR. The results were stunning–some of the best I ever did. This technique is a great avenue for creativity, though I miss the old days terribly. I don’t think digital has mastered color the way the old Kodachrome did. Let me know when they finally figure it out!
Blessings to you also,
Kristen
Hi Kristen, thanks again for stopping by. Nothing sees color quite like the human eye, digital gets close enough so I’ll settle for what I can get
You know, I do this … but bury the shots in my Lightroom library … and usually don’t look at or think about them. This is a well-written and informative post which shows that you have considered your practice.
Perhaps it’s time for a bit of archive folder exploring. I’ve found some gens I didn’t appreciate from some of my early work. Most of it is just painful to look at though
hopefully one day I’ll say the same thing about my current work
I’m definitely going to check out your tutorial, since I’m a total geek as far as technical stuff goes… But I desperately want to learn more! So thanks…