Joel Tjintjelaar

Many of you who are entering and exploring the wonderful world of B&W photography and fine art may have stumbled upon some fantastic looking images that seem to look to be coming from another world, another universe. Images in which the water for example looks so smooth and soft and to be made of silk, or images in which a sky is depicted with dynamic looking streaks of fast moving clouds.

See some examples below.

— Exposed III

— Time lapse II

These are the type of images I fell in love with immediately when I saw them for the very first time and the sort of photography I wanted to do myself. So what is this exactly and how can you do it? This is the so called day time long exposure photography and I will tell you how you can do it yourself.

What is Day time long exposure photography and what does it do?

Day time long exposure techniques are the same as night time long exposure shots, the big difference however is that shooting photos during night time requires long exposure shots if you want to see anything at all on your photos while long exposure shots during daylight are not needed and only possible with the use of special filters that are mounted on the lens. So why would you do it? Because you can create those fantastic effects as you can see on the sample shots.

We’re talking about long exposure shots during daylight if we use exposures from roughly speaking more than 1 second up to exposures that take up half an hour or even longer. In any case we are talking about long exposure if we expose the shot longer than necessary by using so called ND filters. ND filters are neutral density filters that will filter the light and hence will increase the shutter times if you want to see anything at all. The effect that a longer exposure time has on objects in motion like water is that the water will look like it has been frozen. The longer the exposure time is, the smoother and more ethereal the water and the waves will look like. If you take a look at the first photo with the pier you see that the water looks like it is frozen and calm. But in fact there were a lot of waves hitting the pier but the long exposure time of 30 seconds in this case has flattened the waves and ripples and smoothened the surface of the water.

Let’s take a look at another example.

— This is a long exposure shot during day light with an exposure of 30 seconds using an ND filter and taken under a famous pier in the Netherlands

— And this is almost the same shot, in color and with a slightly different angle, taken right after the first shot but with a regular day time exposure of 1/80 seconds, without using any ND filters, just using the camera and a lens

You can clearly see the waves and ripples in the water in the regular exposure while in the long exposure the water looks frozen and is very smooth, making it more aesthetical to watch. Now let’s get practical, how can I do a long exposure shot and what do I need?

Taking the long exposure shot

Besides your standard equipment like the camera, the lens and a tripod, you’ll also be needing a remote or cable shutter release and an ND filter.

The ND filter comes in various sizes and shapes dependent on the manufacturer and the lens you need to mount the filter on and also in various densities dependent on the effect and the exposure time you need. I will discuss in more detail the various options you have in ND filters in another article, for now it will suffice to say that the greater the density of the ND filter, the less light will enter the lens, hence the longer the exposure can be. ND filters come in densities varying from 0.3 ND or (reducing light with) 1 f-stops to ND3.0 with 10 f- stops or even larger densities. The 0.3 ND has a filter factor of 2x and is very often used to reduce the light if you want to take a regular exposure shot when the sun is very bright and the fastest shutter time on the camera is not sufficient to not overexpose your photo. If you use larger density filters like a 0.9 ND with 3 f-stops or even more f-stops than the intention is to attain typical long exposure effects during day time.

For the long exposure shot in the example I’ve used a 10 f-stops ND filter with a filter factor of 1000x and an exposure time of 30 seconds to get the effect I’ve desired. I could’ve taken a shot with an even longer exposure time to get an even softer and more ethereal look of the water but then I needed an extra filter to stack on the ND filter I’ve used. At any time you’ll need a tripod and if you want to do exposures longer than 30 seconds you’ll also be needing the remote or cable shutter release since most cameras have the Bulb option in the camera to activate exposure times longer than 30 seconds and it’s an option that can only be used by continuously pressing the shutter button. Something that is more convenient to do if you use the cable shutter release with the option to lock the shutter button.

Recommended equipment list in addition to your camera and lens – see next article on more information on filters

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