Looking for ideas - long exposure

ChrisN

ChrisN

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I'm looking for ideas for subjects for long daylight exposures. I'm thinking of the obvious people-in-the-city type shots (and especially people's legs/feet walking past), and there's the cliched moving water shots. Any other ideas? With Pan-F exposed at 25, f/22 and my darkest filters I can probably use up to 1 sec in good daylight.

I'm planning to use a tripod, to let me freeze the background. But I guess there's other options, too.

Any suggestions? Better yet, any examples?

Thanks! :)
 
I was wondering about exactly the same thing last night before I went to bed.

I was thinking of taking a number of short exposures instead of one long one to try and cut out people walking about and just get the stationary objects.

For example, 16 shots at 1/1000 instead of 1 at 1/60.

Anyone tried this?
 
kully said:
I was wondering about exactly the same thing last night before I went to bed.

I was thinking of taking a number of short exposures instead of one long one to try and cut out people walking about and just get the stationary objects.

For example, 16 shots at 1/1000 instead of 1 at 1/60.

Anyone tried this?
Click to expand...
If you want the scene and no moving objects/people, try a pinhole camera or lens. Or a dark enough ND filter. If you can get exposures into the "several minute" range, then moving objects or people will not be in the frame long enough to register on the film.
Rob
 
I once spoke with an old time photographer who was commissioned by the University of Toronto to document their buildings. The shots were not to include people or cars. He found it impossible to find a single moment in time where there wasn't a car or person in the pic. He described his solution: to take many (some number between 10 and 100, I can't remember) shots of the building on the same sheet of film in his LF camera on a tripod, each shot underexposed, but so that the accumulated exposures would result in a properly exposed image of the building. If a person or a car was in one of the exposures, it would be completely under exposed and not show up in the final print.

This isn't really an answer to your question, but I thought it was interesting and somewhat related.
 
I took this at the Met sometime last winter.. 2 second exopsure. Not exactly outside, daylight, but I like the effect.

88130138_70dc8a4605.jpg
 
ChrisN said:
I'm looking for ideas for subjects for long daylight exposures. I'm thinking of the obvious people-in-the-city type shots (and especially people's legs/feet walking past), and there's the cliched moving water shots. Any other ideas? With Pan-F exposed at 25, f/22 and my darkest filters I can probably use up to 1 sec in good daylight.

I'm planning to use a tripod, to let me freeze the background. But I guess there's other options, too.

Any suggestions? Better yet, any examples?

Thanks! :)
Click to expand...

Assuming bright daylight, f/16 rule, for 1 sec you are talking f/64 to f/90. You will likely need a couple of filters (preferably ND, or an ND and say a strong 25 red) to get where you want for what you are suggesting. I would suggest some longer exposures as suggested above, all for different effects. Consider trying to shoot shadow movement using the technique mentioned by FrankS. Might be interesting, if tedious. Certainly a lens cap (or other cover such as a body cap) used as a pinhole lens will give you longer exposures.

Be sure to show us what you do and how it turns out. Hopefully others can give even more and better suggestions.
 
Definatly some ND filters. Maybe a couple of 2-3 stop ones. or a 2-3 stop ND and a Polarizer for extra effect etc. Though then you'd need to shoot in the afternoon or morning. Polarizer wont do anything during the middle of the day.

Hmmm not sure on subjects. There is always the water or people as you have said. Maybe try something like an interesting building with a big flag flapping in the wind? I did some interesting IR shots of palm trees. The trunks were all sharp but parts of the tree at the top were all sorta swishy because they were swaying in the wind. It was an interesting effect. Any buildings that have revolving doors might be cool. A nice sharp building with the funny blurry door and maybe some people walking through it?
 
Keep your eye out for architechture, and anything that may have good contrasts with lights and darks. That will help out. I have a few night-time long exposures in my rff gallery, not daylight, but those were the things I had looked for.. lighting, lines, contrasts.
 
If you intend to photograph at night or with very short exposure times, note that n multiple exposures of time t each are not equal to one long shot of n*t, because of the Schwarzschild effect.

Philipp
 
Thanks for the tips and suggestions, folks. I've got an ND4 and a polariser, and some experiments (with digital - don't want to waste precious film!) show I'm getting close to what I want - just need another ND4 I think!

Jano - you're spot on with what I'm thinking of - I'm very much inspired by the work of Trent Parke at Magnum, like this and this, and I really love this one. I won't be doing anything original, but I'd like to get a grip on the technique. I wonder if he gets the extreme contrast in developing or post-processing?
 
ChrisN said:
Jano - you're spot on with what I'm thinking of - I'm very much inspired by the work of Trent Parke at Magnum, like this and this, and I really love this one. I won't be doing anything original, but I'd like to get a grip on the technique. I wonder if he gets the extreme contrast in developing or post-processing?
Click to expand...

man, this Trent Parke guy is very talented.. how do you think he's doing these? double exposures? darkroom? photoshop?
 
Chris, wow.. I really like that stuff.

I did mine through a lot of practice with long exposures at night, burned through a lot of film.. I've gotten pretty good at estimating exposure for Acros 100 during the night (very good film). Daytime stuff is more difficult, I'm not accustomed to dealing with ND filters and I've never done it -- but I think I may want to give this a try :)
 
Long exposures of people moving a little work best IMHO when there are also some people that are not moving. For example a busy street with people walking past a shop (moving) with say a couple looking in the shop window (still). Another variation on this would be someone sitting on a park bench with some joggers passing by or a group of kids running about.

Just a thought, I might even have a go at this myself :)
 
Take two polarizers, rotate opposite each other until almost no light comes through. Back off until you get the exposure you want. I learned this recently while looking through a polarizer with polarized sunglasses. The polarizer went black.
 
michael.panoff said:
man, this Trent Parke guy is very talented.. how do you think he's doing these? double exposures? darkroom? photoshop?
Click to expand...

The first one is a bus passing. how long does it take a vehicle at 60km/h
to travel 10metres t make a 10m blur?

10 * 3600 / 60000
.6000

lets call it 1/2 second. The details (in all 3 shots) which are irrelevant have been
printed down. My guess is that he knows how to develop the film to get the
contrast he wants, and then prints it down further using paper choice or multi-contrast filters, and then burns in everything else. In all three cases the
most difficult thing to do is the composition and timing. The rest is pretty easy.

BTW for ChrisN. Cloud streaks are another daylight (or perhaps dusk) thing to do. I have no idea how to do those, perhaps an IR filter? I've found I get nothing on HP5+ through an IR filter though.

Thanks,
James
 
Wayne - thanks for the tip on using two polarisers - I had forgotten about that effect.

And Fitzi - thanks for that interesting link. My internet connection is extremely slow at the moment, and I can't get it to download fully, but from the text part I can see ("the people blur into grey shadow figures in a ghost-like crowd, with perhaps a solitary hand or shoe standing still in time.") it will be worth the effort.

And I had forgotten to comment on Michael's photo that he posted above. That would look stunning in an enlargement!

This will be fun!
 
here's something I dug up about Trent Parke, some interesting stuff about his approach to developing his technique:

http://www.photoreview.com.au/features/profiles/trent-parke-profile.aspx

James B.. maybe that bus going by was either being beamed by a focused stream of light, or perhaps it had the interior lights on. Either way, as you've stated, much was going in the darkroom.

Did anyone notice his double exposed swimmers in the clouds? I think they're double exposures.. The above article mentions that he shoots with a Lecia M and a 28mm lens. How do you double expose on a Leica? My M3 locks the shutter until I advance the film, thereby setting the spring... am I missing something?
 
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