Hi I'm Adam and welcome to first man
photography today I'm in Whitby where we're going to be talking about how to use
long exposure photography to up your photography game let's go before we get into this today this video
is sponsored by Squarespace if you need a domain name, a website or an online
store then make your next move with Squarespace since I was in Glencoe in
January I have not been out to shoot any landscape photography and that's because
Glencoe was just so epic but I was really happy with the shots I captured
and like I've mentioned before when I am doing landscape photography particularly
I ride a wave there are ups there are downs and when I hit high like Glencoe
there's always a slump afterwards where my creativity just eludes me for a
little bit and it takes some time to get things back and going again one of the
things is to employ different techniques and that is what I do with long exposure
photography so I'm going to talk you through some of the things to do to
start shooting some really nice long exposure images and just gives you
another technique to be more creative and create something different to
everything else you see there are a few things you're gonna need though in order
to do that and we'll talk about that in a minute but isn't it just absolutely
brilliant being at the beach the feeling I always
used to get when I was younger as you drive down to the coast that first sight
you get of the sea it's just so exciting my kids get excited about it now and I
still feel excited in the very same way you then get out the car in a place like
Whitby you can smell the sea air the fish and chips it's just a really quite
a special thing at the seaside so the things you need are firstly a scene to
shoot and I've come here to just by Whitby Abbey and I've got this view down
to the harbour and the bells going off..... I wonder what time it is..... So I have Whitby harbour
here and it's perfect for a long exposure because you need to have two
elements you need to have something is moving and then something that's static
in your image because it's lengthening exposure and smoothing out that out that
movement that creates the interest in a long exposure shot and makes it
different from a normal static shot so after that it's about gear really and
you're going to need a camera that has a bulb mode or a timer in order to push
your exposure longer than 30 seconds you're then going to need a filter an ND
filter a solid ND filter of either six ten or even sixteen stops which I'm
using for this shot here you're also going to need tripod because any movement in
your camera will lose sharpness out of your image so a nice sturdy tripod is a
recommendation and then also you need to if you're using a DSLR you need to cover
the eyepiece because light can creep in through the eyepiece and during a three
minutes plus exposure that can really damage your image and make very strange
things happen. So once we've done that we need to compose a shot and that's
what I've done here I've got the Harbour sort of leading you up into those small
lighthouses at the end of the harbor and it's going to be a really
straightforward image I've got the sea or horizon going along the top of the
rule of thirds line and that's going to be my shot and as I smooth out the water
and smooth out the clouds it'll be quite an interesting image so then it's about
firstly taking a normal exposure so we can then adjust our exposure time
depending on what that is so for this scene it's one three hundred and
twentieth of a second at f/8 and ISO 100 that's for my normal exposure and then I
need to use an app or a exposure calculator to work out how long that
exposure is going to be so in this case it is three minutes 20 seconds I use
photo pills app there are loads out there that will work out your exposure time
before you put your filter on though you need to make sure you have your focus
locked because once you attach that dark filter to the front of the camera the
camera will not know what to do because it won't be able to see in a normal way
so you need to get your focus locked and then switch to manual focus so we're not
going to get any focusing issues also you need to turn your IS off if you have
image stabilization because that can introduce some movement into the image
as well and we don't want that it's quite windy at the moment so with that
kind of exposure I am going to get a slight amount of movement which will
reduce the sharpness a little bit but it shouldn't be too bad so once we've done
that we just need to punch in our exposure time on this Canon 5d Mark 4 it
lets you do it with a built-in bulb timer if you don't have one of them
you're going to need to put in a shutter release cable and just turn it into
build mode and then lock off your exposure for as long as you have decided
it needs to be and then just time it with your phone or some of the shutter
release cables actually have a time so I'm gonna go ahead I've got the bulb
mode set I've got the timer set and I'm just gonna use the 2 second timer so
there's no movement in the camera and then go ahead and shoot okay so I'm set up for my second shot of
the day just as the Sun is moving into golden hour, one of the really nice
things about long exposure photography is it really says to the viewer that
it's not just a snap shot you have literally put the time and the effort in
to capture something different than anyone else walking by would have
captured and this is quite a good example of what I've got set up here and
where you can really use long exposure to your advantage so across the harbor
there towards the other harbor wall there is this really interesting ladder
and the composition I have is just with that ladder in the scene and then the
the harbor wall essentially filling the middle of the frame with the horizon on
the top rule of thirds and then the on the bottom of the wall on the bottom
rule of thirds I have the 70-200 mm lens on there and I'm zoomed
fairly well in at about 100 millimetres on that ladder and with the layers of
the seaweed and the moss and the brick in the shape it's all working perfectly
for a long exposure because there's some really interesting textures in that wall
and that ladder and then that's contrasted against the really smoothed out
water and then the smoothed out sky when I do the long exposure so for this one I
only have a 10 stop filter for this lens so it is going to be a 51 second
exposure and that's still enough to smooth out the water and smooth out the
sky and create that effect that I'm looking for.
The type of ND filter that
you use really depends on your budget this one which I'm testing out today for
the first time is a very very cheap one this was about 20 pounds and it fits on
the front of the 70-200 I have used expensive ones I've used cheap ones this
is actually looking to be pretty decent it doesn't introduce a color cast or
anything like that so I'm fairly impressed so far and long exposure
photography does not have to be expensive
on top of what you've got this is a ten stop one like I said but yeah
pretty good. Another great thing about long exposure is that if you have people
walking through your scene and particularly in a busy tourist area
like this you can remove them from the shot using the long exposure because as
long as they keep moving through your scene they won't be captured at any one
point and it's a really good technique for removing people from your scene so
I'm all set up to take this shot I have the bulb timer on again I'm at f/16
it's gonna be a 51 second exposure iso100 hoping that nice golden light
stays on the wall shoot that wait 51 seconds let's have a
look So I'm all setup up for my last shot of the
day and I've had to have a bit of a mad dash down to the next town or village
from Whitby down to Sandsend because the tide as you can see has come
right in and there was no beach left at Whitby. So i had to rush dow...... I'm
worried about the sea cathcing my feet here had to rush down to Sandsend
because I wanted to finish the day with a seascape with long exposure when it
comes to sunsets which it is about now long exposure is not the best thing to
capture a sunset especially if you've got the Sun in the image because you can
imagine as the exposure goes the Sun is moving through scene so it just doesn't
look right what long exposure is absolutely perfect
for though is that time after sunset which we're just getting into now as then
that's normally the time that the color fills the sky if you've got a good
sunset and using long exposure to capture that is great because what it
does is as that color develops and as the color moves at different spots
through the sky if you're exposing all the time that that's happening the image
will capture all of that color so actually you capture a little bit more
color than you would normally capture with just a very quick exposure image
and that's exactly what I'm doing here so for my composition I'm using these
I don't know what the called.....
I do know the name but I've forgotten these
poles leading into the sea and then I've got the sea washing up just over this
wall here which I'm stood on the tide is coming in so I'm probably gonna get wet
feet very shortly that's my composition from the bottom
right hand corner up into the image and then just smoothing out that sea with a
nice long exposure then capturing as much color in the sky as I can at the
moment I have a six stop filter on there because as it gets the end of the day
and the light comes down a six stop filter it's good for just extending that
exposure to around a minute to two minutes depending on the light so the
good thing about the six stop filter is your camera can still see through it so
you can still compose through the liveview you can't really see through the
viewfinder we can still compose through the live view when it compensates for
that. Sunset wise tonight are we gonna get any colour... Huh....I don't really know
because at the other side there is the wall here for the road but at the other
side of that where the Sun is actually setting behind you there there is a
massive bank of horizon cloud so there's not gonna be
any massive color but I do have some very high altitude cloud here which
could still catch some color maybe 20 minutes after the Sun sets. So I'm gonna wait around for that and try and capture that in this
long exposure I might experiment with different things
you can experiment with different lengths of exposure to get different
effects in the water if you want some swirling do it for a bit shorter a few
seconds even and you can really experiment using your long exposures and
use it creatively and it's another technique just to get the creative juices flowing
and that's exactly what I use it for anyway stick around to the end for the
image and a really awesome time-lapse to finish the day as well but
I really hope you've enjoyed the video leave a comment down below and let me
know what you think of long exposure any questions as well I'm quite happy to
answer and please do share the video because that really helps me out this
video as you know is sponsored by Squarespace
thanks so much to Squarespace for continuing to sponsor me but if you go
to Squarespace.Com to start your free trial today and go to Squarespace.Com/firstman to get 10% off your first purchase anyway I hope you've enjoyed
the video I'll see you on another one very very soon.
I'm Adam, this is first
man photography, at the beach in the beautiful North Yorkshire Out!!! Sharp and it creates a nice gypped Jukes
it creates a nice juxtaposition.
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