Daytime Long Exposure #1

More and more, I find myself drawn to the soft abstractions that result from Long Exposure photography. The contrast between the tranquility of smooth water and an object invading the scene results in a surreal picture. When I look at this type of photograph, I’m drawn to the simplicity. Some of my favorite photographers that shoot in this style are Michael Kenna, Michael Levin and David Burdeny. The problem is that when I try to take photos in this style, I’m not sure where to start. Should I shoot in the morning? Should I shoot in the evening? How long should I keep the shutter open for? What filters should I use? There is only one way to find out what works for me. I need to shoot. Shoot A LOT. This blog is going to help me document my progress in this photographic style.

I will be posting my set up shots, some of my test shots, and my final shots. I hope to begin to better understand what I need to do on the technical side in order to create photographs that appeal to me. I will not limit myself to Black and White or Color. This will all depend on pre-visualization as well as my taste for the final shot after postproduction work.

The shot shown above is of a cement block with an old chain connector on the top. You can click any photo and see a larger version. On a previous trip to this location, the water was much lower, leaving the block dry on the beach. Last week when I headed to the same area, I found it mostly submerged in the water. I decided that this would be a great subject to photograph. I took a few test shots, and decided on a shutter speed of 2 minutes using a 10-Stop Neutral Density filter. When I set up this shot, I was looking down on the scene. My tripod was holding the camera about chest high. The resulting shot is shown below. I was happy with the misty look of the water in the upper part of the frame, but unhappy with how much of the block you could see on the bottom part of the frame. My goal was to make the cement appear out of the misty water.

It was a very bright overcast afternoon (probably not the best conditions to be attempting a photo like this). As I moved around the block of cement, I noticed that when I crouched down the glare on the water really began to engulf the water surrounding the block. The result was that the submerged portion was not as visible as it was in my test shot. Simply by moving my head, slightly changing my perspective the mood of the final shot moved closer to what I had initially envisioned. With today’s digital technology, I should probably shoot 100 photos in slightly different positions, take them home and pick the group that I like the best. I don’t do that. This is a personal preference. I can see the advantages of doing so. But I like the process of anticipating the final image and taking my time in creating it. In this case, I took two test shots from a high vantage point, and two images from the low vantage point.

The photograph to the left is how I set up the final image. As you can see, I got the camera fairly low to the ground. This photo shows how the glare on the water really starts to hide most of the cement block. Once I downloaded the image, I thought it could use a bit of a saturation boost to bring out the sand color. The boost was minimal, but I think it adds to the mood that I was going for in this photo. From this exercise I learned that a very subtle change of perspective, even a few feet, can have a remarkable effect on your finished product.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 30th, 2010 at 6:38 pm and is filed under Long Exposures and tagged with Abstract, Long Exposure, Neutral Density, Water Blur. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.