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
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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