Practice, Practice, Practice...

I remember when I was young, my father setting up a tripod at a picturesque spot and using his Hasselblad camera to take a photo near dusk, remove the film magazine, advance the shutter, and wait an hour or so and then take another photo after dark, using the same negative, to capture the night scene on the same image.

Today, this photographic trick can be done relatively easily using separate digital images and combining them using Photoshop. One of the areas of photography that I am keen to develop, however, is long exposure photography. There are a number of digital photographic techniques that can assist a photographer get amazing images.

As a starting point, I'm working on taking good long exposure images. THe images I'm sharing here only have the most basic post processing techniques/tricks; at some point, I'd like to master image stacking, but as they say, baby steps...

Recently, on a trip to the eastern Sierras in late July, I took advantage of the clear and relatively light pollution-free night skies. I did have a three quarters moon to contend with, but in the following image, it was behind me, which did serve to illuminate the mountains, while I focused on getting a good shot of the Big Dipper:

This was a 30 second exposure, using a good tripod, and a remote shutter activation via my cell phone. I was using my 16mm- 80 mm lens, set to 16mm, and the aperture was f2.4, to try to capture as much light as possible. The focus was on manual, as well. It wasn't until later, when I was back home, and looking carefully at the image, that I realized that I had also captured comet NEOWISE, as well! If you look at the second peak from the left, and go up, there it is. Had I realized, I probably would have switched to a telephoto lens and tried to get an even better shot, but to be honest, all those spectacular shots of the tail were done using image stacking, a digital processing technique, I've yet to master.

A couple of weeks later, I was visiting a friend in the Colorado Rockies, and decided to do some more long exposure photography, as I had brought my tripod with me. All these photos are looking toward the east, though the first shot below is more NNE. I'm looking from the patio of my friend's place, with I-70 in the distance and the Eisenhower Tunnel and Continental Divide, just before sunset.

This is a 4 sec exposure, at 80mm, f32. I don't own any gradient filters, and I was playing around with getting sky definition, as well as definition in the town below.

I switched the camera position for the remaining shots and opened up the lens to 34mm; for the next shot, I was at 1 second exposure (at f25):

Here, I'm concentrating on the towns of Silverthorne and Dillon, as well as Lake Dillon, though I-70 and the route to/from the Eisenhower Tunnel is still visible on the far left. You'll note that there isn't as much color definition in the peaks of the Continental Divide, due to the shorter exposure.

The next shot is from roughly the same vantage point, but a little later in the evening, and with an exposure of 1 second ( at f25). I did adjust the vertical, to get more sky in the frame. I also opened up the zoom lens to 26mm, as well. This also enhanced the color in the peaks. All the subsequent photos will have the same vantage point.

At the same time that I adjusted the camera angle, I also changed the focus point, to be in the center of the frame. This helped bring up the colors in the evening sky. [Wildfires to the north and west of us didn't hurt, either.]

This shot (above) was taken a couple of minutes later, at a 4 second exposure (f20). The color is not as vibrant in this image, though you can start to see the light trails from the cars going to/from the Eisenhower Tunnel at the far left. After waiting about ten minutes, I took another shot:

This shot was taken using a 20 second exposure (f8); the town is clearly visible and the car light trails along I-70 are very crisp. There's also more color in the sky.

Eight minutes later, I took another photo, this time at f5.6 for 30 seconds:

Due to the longer exposure time, the sky is roughly the same color as in the previous image, but you can tell that the town is brighter and the lights somewhat more diffuse.

The final image was taken another fifteen minutes later; by now the twilight has pretty much gone:

This was at 30 second exposure and f4; the car light trails are bright and the lights in the town are illuminating the smoke in the air from the wildfires.

I think all these images work; in retrospect, had I to do it all over again, I might have reduced the exposure time to 20 - 25 seconds for the last two images, but I'm still happy with the results that I got. As in all things, practice makes perfect...