Daily Archive

“No man has the right to dictate what other men should perceive, create or produce, but all should be encouraged to reveal themselves, their perceptions and emotions, and to build confidence in the creative spirit.”  Ansel Adams

I’ve become fascinated by the whole concept of long exposure photography.  We’ve bought some ND filters, so now I can explore this medium in daylight whereas before I could only do it at night.  It’s a whole new learning curve, and is teaching me even more about the requirements of a good photograph and about how light affects everything – whether there is lack of it or not.  Today I played around with creating a silky effect of the ocean waves washing ashore over the lava rocks on the beach.  Longer exposures (2 seconds up to 30 seconds seem to create a whispy, dreamy effect while faster shutter speeds (1/4 or 1/2 second) create the long, silky ribbon effect.  These are all done with a .4 and .8 ND filter stacked on my 70-200mm VRII lens).  I even stacked a polarizer for the longer exposures.  

The composite below is of my walking shoe impression in the sand (can’t climb the lava rocks in bare feet), and one of the long exposure shots I did.  This one was at 3 seconds.

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