Photography Site - Digital Photographer

Digital Photographer has some interesting How-To articles on its site. I read up on long exposure photos with blurred motion. That technique provides for really interesting night time city highway shots, and pretty waterfalls.

In contrast to using fast shutter speeds to freeze action, using long exposures is a very creative means to convey motion in a photograph. A blurred image can be a very impressionistic rendition of movement, giving the viewer a sense of sensation.

By using a long exposure at night, your camera can record patterns of moving lights that can’t be seen by the human eye. Cars, trains, busses and other motor vehicles are excellent subjects for this technique. The vehicles often move too fast to be recorded on your camera’s sensor during a long exposure, yet their lights leave ribbons of bright colors across the scene. Busy roadways can become rivers of red and white.

It’s best to set up your tripod at locations where the ambient light (from streetlights and buildings) isn’t too strong, and where you can get a good view of fast-moving traffic. I like to shoot from a city sidewalk or on a bridge over a freeway at dusk. Your time exposures will probably be very long— from several seconds up to a minute— so a tripod is important. Use an ISO setting of 100 to 400, and although you’ll be using your camera on shutter priority, try to use very small apertures like f/16 or f/22 to prevent overexposure.

I'm really drawn to nighttime photography, so I think I'll be looking into a camera that does better at nightime shots. My current camera doesn't do so well. I can't count the number of times I've tried to photograph the moon or night clouds and my picture just turns up completely black.

The How-To about shooting in existing light helped me work with shooting inside. My camera's flash sucks up the battery life like none other, so I prefer working without my flash when I can. It was interesting to see that they suggested using the flash outside to help even a strong light source and to not use the flash inside, even though you might need the extra lighting, as it changes the colors and the dramatic lighting you already had.

There were also articles about how to retouch photos, or how to shoot macro photos, or how to make money as a photographer, but they either didn't have anything new to me in them, or nothing pertinent. I don't plan on being a professional photographer, I just want to learn how to take decent photos for myself and my work.