Working with a tripod and filter to create long exposures effects in the daylight.
Blue hour exposures
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176 Billy Newman Photo podcast mixdown Long Exposure Landscape Photographs
Hello, and thank you very much for listening to this episode of The Billy Newman photo podcast. Appreciate you guys checking out this episode recording here this afternoon about some stuff. I’m up to you. And some folks that have been working out, I’ve been trying to do some things with some long exposures this last couple of weeks, which has been pretty fun, it’s tough in the wintertime, like probably what are you guys noticed too, as you’re out shooting around. But, still, there’s a lot of stuff in the wintertime and many opportunities, but there’s sort of like limited daylight hours. And sometimes without like the, for landscape photos, if you’re going into the Evergreen locations or snow, there’s a lot of stuff you could do. But to kind of capture like a lot of color in the winter, it’s tricky; sometimes it’s a problem I have in the area that I’m in a lot to where a lot of the deciduous trees have lost their leaves, a lot of the grass or the greenery is, is dull right now.
And so a lot of the vegetation is kind of, you know, just not in bloom. And so it’s not like that playful look that I would hope for right now. Sometimes, though, like out in Eastern Oregon or out in some other areas, or you know, as I’ve seen in an evergreen forest, it’s still sort of all year round about the same or something, but yeah, as it is right now, it’s cool to take pictures of the water features and stuff is like a lot of the high rains and stuff have come through. And then a lot of the ponds and lakes and the creeks and stuff are kinds of flowing pretty consistently. So it’s kind of cool to try and take some pictures of that stuff. But what I’ve been working on along with that is some long exposure photography. And I liked that stuff to kind of pull out more color and more dynamics into the photo, especially during times like this in the wintertime when it’s gray, it’s a little muted of a lot of the colors or a lot of the dynamics that you would kind of want to work with, I guess in the summer, or you know more normally. So I like the most extended style throughout the year.
But I do like it during this time when you can kind of shoot at the edges of the day, sort of in the Magic Hour of the golden hour stretch before sunset, and then some blue hour period after sunset, or vice versa, you know that the sunrise times. But it’s pretty cool trying to use that along with the clouds that are a pretty permanent fixture here in the Oregon area. But it’s cool. If you have broken up clouds, what’s incredible about these long exposure effects is that you can leave the shutter open for, say, some 30 seconds. And a lot of this stuff I’ve been working with a Lee big stopper; it’s like a ten stop ND filter. And I’ve talked about it a couple of times on here before, but an excellent filter works nicely. And it’s a 10-step filter. So what you can do is put that in front of the lens, and then you rack back your exposure to ten full stops. And so what that allows you to do is to take these long—exposure photographs, where you get these, the softened skies or softened waterscapes, you can get that effect during total daylight hours.
Whereas usually, you’d be kind of stuck doing long exposure stuff just in actual low light circumstances. Kind of what’s cool about is even a bit into the daytime, a couple of hours before, so you can use this filter anytime during the day to get these long exposure effects. And it’s cool, yeah, when you’re working in the blue hour range, you can get some long exposures, which is pretty cool. But, but that’s excellent for when it’s sort of like a more smooth overcast. So you have a pretty consistent amount of light, the sun would still be up, but a pretty solid wall of clouds occludes it. And then whatever view you have, you have maybe some water element or some mixed kind of weather cloud and sky limit.
And with that, that Lee big stopper, you can throw that up in front of it drop your exposure settings down to a point where it’s a real slow, long exposure, and then you can capture that drift that the water will have over, let’s say 30 seconds or a minute of exposure. Or you can catch the sense that the clouds have over, say, a minute or two minutes or even maybe, say, five minutes or more of exposure with digital cameras. It gets tricky. Modern ones are better after a couple of minutes, but noise starts to gather with accurate long exposures. You sometimes see many people do, you know, like long-exposure stuff that works out pretty good. Many bulb settings on most digital cameras only work up to like 30 seconds like an automated setting, but if you have a trigger, you can run that shutter for a more extended period and then have it released. I find that most of the stuff I do is fine at around 30 seconds.
Suppose I have a big stop around there. In that case, I can adjust that 32nd exposure for any light would have during the day, even like a lot of circumstances where it’d be like an exposed amount of sunlight in the area of as long as it’s not like a direct sun just because it sort of throws weirds light casts into the, into the way of the lens. But you shouldn’t kind of away from the sun in a way where your camera’s shaded, and you don’t have like a weird light leak situation, and you can shoot that in the daytime at like a mixed cloudy landscape sky and get the effects that will lead big stopper. And it’s pretty cool. I like getting to use that. And it’s or opens up those opportunities you get at Blue hour or during golden hour to do some of those long exposure, sweeping landscape shots.
But it’s cool; yeah, working with water has been pretty cool. Any of those dynamic elements, it’s kind of cool to stretch out like the movement of the clouds, you don’t think about that as an active element a lot of the time, but it does kind of look surreal, adds some softened look to it. And it’s like exposures that kind of, like sort of blur out a lot of the distractions that might be there otherwise, so it’s kind of fun to try and use it. And it is, it’s apart, it’s part of what I’m up to; I’m trying to work on some surrealism photos a lot of the time. Otherwise, it’s just like, and I don’t know, I’m bored and otherwise. So try to do some photo stuff; it’s been kind of cool, working with the long exposure stuff. Jumping out to forest areas and some ocean trips, that sort of stuff, I was talking about that longer combat ship that I did for a couple of days along the coast, and then another one kind of like that beforehand.
But right now, I’m just kind of up to a couple of day chips through the week. So to deal with some outdoorsy things, trying to well that the weather is kind of back and forth. Some parts that we’re going to get hit with some pretty cold weather and snow. Some features of getting hit with warm coastal weather like 50 degrees for some of it, hear about the Midwest being down at zero degrees or negative 30. So it’s tricky to be winter weather break, and it’s, I’m trying to go out a bit. And yeah, do some day trip stuff. So I can shoot over to the coast or shoot up to some Forest Service roads and drive around and do some stuff up there.
And that’s been pretty cool that I’m looking forward to going out on some longer trips planned for March and April and some other stuff kind of stretching out beyond there. And I have a couple of things that I probably do here through the rest of February; I got a couple more weeks left and some projects I got to get done. But in there, I’m going to fit in a couple of trips out to Eastern Oregon. I’m hoping at least one ship out there to Eastern Oregon to get some some some photo stuff done. And I need to try and get some other media video work stuff started.
I got to try and catch it through the winter before I get out of the season that I’m stuck with, just like the spring and summer opportunities, which are excellent too. And I need those, but I need to get out and do some work right now, which is tough. It’s tough getting it all in. So it’s fun, but the type of fun working on that stuff. Otherwise, I’m just working through my gear and packing it. It’s kind of weird. I don’t know if you guys go through your gear like, like after a trip, you kind of like break it down. I guess I wash it out or like to fix a little stuff that I like got broken or messed up or something like that. And it’s always kind of weird doing that after chips and stuff for restocking and setting up, but I’m going through doing that and prepping some propane for the heater unit I’ve got. I’m getting my hand warmers stacked, and I’m getting my gloves and my cold weather stuff set. And I haven’t gotten out to the snow much this year, you know, like up into the hills for really anything that’s like that cold weather. So I got used to being a little tardy halfway through February.
But I’m having a pretty good time hanging out here and doing some photo editing stuff, some stuff with these long exposures, and I guess it’s kind of what I’m going to keep working on. I’m hoping to get out to the redwoods soon, and I have a couple of ideas around some landscape stuff that I want to do out there when I get set up. But thanks a lot for checking out this episode of The Billy Newman photo podcast. I will do a couple of quick one’s next week, but I appreciate you guys tuning in for this short minor update for Billy Newman’s photo comm. If you want more information, you can go to Billy Newman photo comm to see some information about the blogs and put up the photos I posted. And you can check out the Instagram pages too.
I think Billy Newman’s photo strikes that it’s at Billy Newman on Instagram. And then there are a couple of others out there that are they also exist, but I believe humans want to go to Billy Newman photo comm for more information about me, and I’ll talk to you guys again next week. Thanks a lot.