Long Exposure Photography

Hey everyone!

Happy Friday and welcome back to CapturedbyBarry :)

Today's blog is going to be on Long Exposure Photography. Some people may not know exactly what this is however when I include some pictures you will,  it's pretty cool and done by many photographers. It is a technique in which a camera's shutter is left open to expose over a long period of time this gives you all the movement in the shot captured, which can result in some interesting effects.

It really brings the image to 'life' as I always say, lets you envision it in a different perspective.

So, without further ado let me talk to you about my experience in Belfast with Long Exposure Photography. As Belfast is quite Urban and full of busy traffic I thought why not take some Long Exposure shots of the trails of car lights! I read that night time is the best for this type of Photography so I waited for it got a bit dark and headed out in my car to find somewhere that was above the cars - so basically looking down onto a motorway or somewhere that had a trail of fast moving cars, sounds dangerous but these are the things you have to do for a good photo lol. 

My first location which was the red bridge that crosses from the Royal Victoria Hospital over the West-link. It was VERY windy and hard to get that exposure on point.

I thought this shot was quite cool as you can see the Balls of the Falls in the background and the light trails of the Cars are so vibrant! I shot this photo for around 30 seconds and may I add handheld without a tripod! which is pretty impressive considering how windy it was and how shaky the human hand is! *Round of applause* 

I was getting very cold so I did a wee bit of research on my phone of bridges where I could stand in Belfast and get cool Long Exposure shots and I came across a spot down beside Belfast City Airport - The Sydenham Railway station crossover. So off I went in my car to try and get more impressive shots.

The above pictures are the shots I got at Sydenham - there was not much traffic therefore it was very hard to time getting it equal on both sides of the roads to create that white vs red trail - I stood foundered for around 45 minutes trying to capture a decent shot and these are the best 3 out of about 20 I got! 

I really enjoyed taking these shots and seeing what can be done with such a small little Lightbox! I would love to try this in different parts of the world where there are a lot of bright lights and moving traffic - picture Times Square? It would literally be stunning for Long Exposure Photography.

I hope you have learnt something useful today from my blog and understand that these are real photos with a real purpose and NO FILTER!!! completely untouched, again I'm quite proud of this lol.

Getting the weather in Ireland is very difficult evidently to take photographs and is very hard to make something of them when everything grey:( but I really want to get some shots of the ocean or rivers and waterfalls in Long Exposure and get that smokey effect - so maybe when the warmer brighter months come in I could venture hehe.

Thanks for having a read guys and I will be back soon with something I've had my mind set on (just trying to pluck the courage). 

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