8 Tips for Shooting Long Exposure Photography

Long exposure photography is a photographic technique that uses a slow shutter speed to flood a camera's image sensor with light. Most photography styles use a rapid shutter speed, but long exposure images require the shutter to remain open for one second or longer. You can achieve this in one of a few ways: by holding down the shutter button, by using a remote shutter release, or by adjusting the camera settings of a DSLR or smartphone camera to automatically keep the shutter open for a long time.

In landscape photography, long exposures can capture the motion of rivers and seascapes, blurring and softening any part of the image where there’s motion. Long exposure photography is also popular in night photography. Long exposures produce star trails in images of the night sky. In nighttime cityscapes, long exposure photographs turn moving cars into linear trails of headlights and brake lights.

Mastering long exposure photography requires both technical skill and an understanding of lighting and composition.

1. 1. Use a tripod. Long exposure photography renders you vulnerable to camera shake, which typically distorts images in undesired ways. Use a tripod for long exposures to steady the camera. You'll thank yourself when you get to the post-processing stage.
2. 2. Use bulb mode for long exposures. Most cameras offer a manual mode that lets you set exposure times for as long as 30 seconds. To go beyond this, use your camera's bulb mode. A bulb mode allows your camera shutter to remain open as long as you'd like. Top DSLRs from companies like Nikon, Canon, Fujifilm, and Sony all feature a bulb mode.
3. 3. Look for images with motion. Motion is an essential element for long exposure photography; without motion, there is nothing in the image to distinguish the passage of time. The time requirement for capturing long exposure shots varies from 15 seconds to 15 minutes to many hours (for longer exposures), depending on the motion you want to capture.
4. 4. Choose kinetic backgrounds for static subjects. Long exposure photography works by pairing motionless subjects with moving backgrounds and vice versa. If you capture a still object, like a lighthouse, during a passing storm, the movement of the clouds will create a blurred sky that shows the effect of time passing, accentuating the static lighthouse.
5. 5. Learn the 500 rule. The 500 rule allows you to calculate the minimum amount of time you need to capture motion blur in a long exposure photograph. Divide 500 by the focal length of your lens. The resulting quotient is the maximum number of seconds for which you can expose an image before capturing light trails and other types of motion blur.
6. 6. Regulate the amount of light that enters the camera. If you use long exposure times, you risk flooding your image sensor with too much light. You can counter this in three ways. One is by using neutral density filters (aka “ND filters” or “stop filters”). These filters go behind a lens and prevent too much light from entering the camera. (Think of sunglasses protecting human eyes.) The other way to manage light is to shoot at night. Light sources in night photography—stars in the Milky Way, the moon, distant headlights—don't overwhelm camera sensors the way that sunlight or portrait studio lights do. Finally, you can limit light exposure by using a small aperture on your camera.
7. 7. Try a few test shots. Your first attempt at a long exposure shot doesn't have to be the final image. The nature of long exposure photography doesn't always provide many chances for do-overs—for instance, a sunrise or sunset offers a limited window of time—but there’s no reason to rush through the process. Before you take a long exposure shot, try a few short exposure shots first to ensure you like the framing and composition.
8. 8. Adjust long exposure images in post. If you upload your images to your computer and find that you weren't able to capture light conditions the way you wanted, you may be able to fix the problem with editing software. Through digital technology, you can mimic certain effects of long exposure photography.

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