I have long been fascinated with timed exposure, or long exposure photography.  I often wondered how pictures of waterfalls and streams that I’ve seen online came out so smooth and silky. When I first began reading about long-exposure shots, I had a Canon Powershot S2IS; a camera with limited functionality.  I managed to pull off a couple of ‘long-exposure’ shots with that camera, but wanted to delve into this genre a little more.

I then learned about neutral density filters, and their ability to help slow down shutter speed, by virtue of their opacity (or lack thereof); when I graduated to a newer camera (Nikon D80), I then acquired the capacity to start playing around with this type of photography.  My first few attempts weren’t overly exciting; I took a shot of some stars that came out ‘okay’, but I didn’t get the results I wanted, due to color shift.  (This is something I still need to work out, but in the winter, it’s very hard to motivate one’s self to stand outside in the cold and dark to get these shots!)

I also decided I’d like to learn how to take shots of the ocean, and achieve the effects that the ‘pros’ get.  Dropping the f-stop to f22 simply wasn’t working well for me, so I bit the bullet and bought a 9-stop neutral density filter.  It’s almost black; darker than a pair of sunglasses, and it’s *so far* helped me to produce a few shots that I like:

I was perusing Twitter and this link popped up:

http://www.isyndica.com/blog/2010/2/10/11-long-exposure-photography.html

There are some great examples of long-exposure shots there, and pieces that have inspired me to get outside and take more shots.  Hopefully, the weather will cooperate soon, so that I can do so!