Actually, it can be headlights as well if that’s more your cup of tea. I prefer tail lights because they have a nicer color and headlights tend to be a bit too bright for that perfect exposure. A friend just asked about the trick of the trade on msn and I thought I’d whip up a quick post about it.
Long exposure and light trails photograpy is really simple and very gratifying, as you get spectacular results pretty much instantly. But to obtain a nice balance between lights and environmental details takes a bit of experimenting.
First of all, it doesn’t do to take a shot in the dark. Pitch black sky and black concrete don’t reflect any lights and will make the photo look dull. You really want detail and a certain amount of light pretty much everywhere in the frame. Therefore, the best time to take these photos, as in any nighttime photography, is the blue hour, that magical little window of time after sunset when the sky is a rich deep blueish purple. This light will also balance the frame so there will be no overly dark or bright spots, which makes a correct exposure much, much easier.
Of course you can break this rule, like I have done many times. On a foggy night, the gazillions of tiny mist drops in the air will spread and reflect the light and give your photos a dreamlike appearance. Or you can venture out on a rainy evening and catch the gorgeous reflections of car lights on the wet asphalt.
When you have found a suitable spot for your photo, a nice street with nice surroundings and a safe place to set up your tripod, you can start thinking about the delicate issue of shutter speed. Some good rules of thumb:
- The more cars drive past during the exposure, the more lights, the more powerful light trail in the photo. On a small street or road, even a single car can produce a good light trail, but I usually jump for joy when I see two or more drive past in a convoy.
- The car(s) should pass through your frame from front to end during the exposure, so the optimal shutter speed would be the amount of time it takes for a car to drive along the part of the road that you are photographing. If the car drives too fast, it won’t have time to leave a significant trail. If it drives too slow, it won’t have time to pass throught the frame, so you’ll end up with a line that ends abruptly half way - not pretty. So have a look at the average speed of the passing cars, then adjust your shutter speed so that a car will have time to cross your frame.
- I always underexpose these photos by at least 1EV, to bring out contrast in the photo. Also take in consideration that a passing car will light up the image, so make sure you count that in when taking a test shot of the empty street to set the exposure values. ISO speed and aperture may have to be tweaked to obtain the crucial shutter speed, but optimally ISO100-200 and aperture f8-f13 yield the best results.
- If you have a polarizer filter, use it to block out disturbing reflections, for example when the car passes under a streetlight that makes its roof shimmer. A filter also makes it easier to adjust the shutter speed to the desired amount.
I’d love to see your light trail photos, so if you have any to showcase, leave the link in a comment here or on my Flickr page. Good luck!

Those of you who follow my Flickr stream will have noticed the abundance of photos displaying creamy, silky water surfaces - the result of a heavily darkened ND filter.

ND filters (short for Neutral Density) are quite simple: pieces of grey glass, depriving the lens of light, thus forcing the camera to use longer shutter speeds. One would wonder, why anyone would want less light, when we pay large amounts of money for lenses with wide aperture and lots of light? There can be many instances when the use of an ND filter is justified. For example, in very bright sunlight, when I want to be able to shoot with a wide aperture for bokeh. Or, in my case, when photographing water and wanting that silky look that comes from water splashing about during a very, very long exposure.

A common ND filter is the ND8. This is a 3 stop filter, which means that you have to open your aperture 3 stops to get the same amount of light as without the filter. I own an NDx1000 filter (10 stops). This filter increases the shutter speed by times one thousand. So if my normal shutter speed would be 1/10, I end up with 100 seconds. 0,5 seconds turn into 500 seconds. And here’s what happens during that time.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

The NDx1000 requires a bit of special handling. When you look at it, you see - blackness. It is almost solid black, so when attached to the lens, you’ll see nothing in the viewfinder. Nothing at all. So composing the image and focusing must be done beforehand, and the filter is screwed into place just before taking the photo. This doesn’t allow forvery spontaneous photos, but it certainly holds an element of surprise - what you see on the LCD is often much more surreal than you’d ever expected. The way the motion of water and clouds blur in a single frame  is quite special and it’s always a thrill to see the result after those minutes in the dark.
If you need more exposure time than you camera allows (usually 30 seconds) and use the B mode, a remote control is necessary, as holding the shutter button down fith your finger will result in motion blur. It is essential to keep the camera steady, so in addition to the remote, you’ll also need a sturdy tripod for those dreamy shots.

Post processing involves getting rid of the hotpixels (red or white pixels scattered across the darker areas as a result of sensor warming due to the long shutter speed) and perhaps also some noise filtering. The NDx1000 tends to give a rather warm color tint to the photo. I usually don’t correct this in the RAW converter, as I feel it adds to the dreamy wuality, but this can of course be adjusted.

A dark ND filter like this is quite a pricey item, but I feel it was worth the investment as I really enjoy to see the clouds sail by and the water turn silky in my new landscape photos. If you don’t want to invest big bucks in and NDx1000, go for an ND8 to begin with. It will give you the same results, only you have to be onsite at a later hour for a darker window of time.

I’m spending my summer holidays in Skåne (the southernmost part of Sweden) and using my days to explore the prettiest landscape photo sites in the area. One of these is Hallamölla Falls, boasting the tallest waterfall in Skåne (several smaller falls with a total height of 21 meters). It is not the Iguazu, but has some photo op potential all the same.

I arrived pretty late in the afternoon, not wanting the sunlight to shine though the foliage and ruin the shot by throwing the lights off balance. By the time I arrived at the waterfalls, the sun had already set behind the tallest of the trees, giving me the shadow I was looking for.

To begin with, I took some standard shots with the falls in the background, but I wasn’t all that happy with the result. I wanted to get close to the falling water! But it was a tricky challenge, as the falls could only be reached from the water surface, there being no path on the shore. I had to make a choice. Either stick with the bland shots from afar, or remove my shoes and wade in to approach the falls. This was a difficult decision, seeing as I am mortally afraid of walking on rocks, steep places, slippery surfaces, generally anything that is not asphalt or a comfortable, wide walking path. Add the risk of falling into ice cold water and risk losing my entire equipment, and you’ll see why I hesitated.  But the pull of the falls was too great. I pulled off my sneakers and socks and placed them on a nearby rock and hoped to see them again one day, then rolled up my jeans, strapped my backpack across my midriff and took the step into the unknown.

There were a fair amount of large rocks to step on, but I had to take a few steps into the water. In the end I preferred wading in stead of balancing on the dry rocks - the water was not altogether unpleasant and the small pebbles at the bottom felt more secure than the large, mossy, slippery rocks above the surface. All in all I spent a good fifteen minutes - well, more stumbling than wading - before reaching my preferred point of view. I did not dare move too fast: I could not risk losing my balance and toppling backwards, my camera stuff being tucked away safely in my large Lowepro backpack. Fortunately I could make use of my tripod as a walking stick.

Once there a single shot was all I needed. Using my Canon EF 28/1.8 lens and an NDx1000 filter with a shutter speed of two minutes, I got a dreamy, otherworldly look of the falls and the small pond in front of them. As in most photos, preparations took a great deal longer than taking the actual photo.

Afterwards I found myself sitting on one of the large rocks, peacefully dangling my feet almost knee deep into the cool water, feeling the strong current from the falls whirling around my toes. It was an immense feeling of accomplishment, having conquered the dangerous depths of a one-foot deep creek, battling the unnamed monsters dwelling under the surface, and returning to tell the tale - with a pretty decent photo to boot! It was a small step for mankind, but a giant leap for a clumsy chick :) It felt great to face my fears and realize that walking on some rocks isn’t, after all, the end of the world.

One type of HDR is the DRI. The acronym is very straightforward: Dynamic Range Increase. DRI images are made using one single RAW file. The technique comes in handy when there is no possibility to shoot bracketed photos of a theme (for example moving objects) or when you simply want to see what it does to your photos Here is an example to what DRI can do for your photos.