Long Exposure Photography
Long Beach Island, NJ
There are a few techniques in photography that I have seemed to gravitate more towards since buying my first DSLR, which just happen to be the same techniques that were used to create the awesome photographs that got my creative and artistic juices flowing and led me to the world of photography in the first place. Although there are many different techniques in photography, its the use of a long exposure or a slow shutter speed that still grab my attention and admiration the most, when done well by other photographers.
Using a long exposure to smooth out water such as the ocean so that it looks as flat as glass, or capture the motion of the water in a waterfall, or even capture the movement of light in the dark of night, such as the stars in the sky as they slowly crawl across the sky. When I first got into photography back in 2010, I would search the web for images like these and admire them, study them, even finding photographers that focused primarily on this technique in their work and email them questions about the gear they used or their setup for different shots that they created. A few of these photographers I am friends with today.
I love the look of a nice pier shot where the water has taken on that flat white glass look, or silky flowing streaks of white showing a slight motion to the water. I love a nice waterfall shot, where a strong angry flow of water takes on a more gentile feel and looks more like silky smooth buttermilk as it softly lands in the waiting pool of swirling water below. How about a shot of a city overpass where the streaking red and white lines left behind by the passing cars as they enter and leave the frame. Its these types of photographs that keep me always thinking of how I can use this technique in a new and different way, to create an image that no one has seen before. Its these types of photographs that humble me into realizing that I have barely scratched the surface with what can be created using a long exposure and a little creativity.
I created this website as a place to showcase some of my personal projects, that don't necessarily play a roll in what Sandi and I have planned for Cass Imaging. Im planning more projects using long exposures, and showing them here for anyone interested to see. Projects that I plan on using to better my skills as not only a photographer, or an artist, but also a story teller. So many different stories can be told with a technique like this, depending on the creativity of its viewer. Where it can spark your imagination, creating a different story by each and every person that can look at it and start to envision what they believe is happening in the captured scene to cause the affect they see in front of them.