fun with long exposures

And after this weekends highlight symposium, I have HL'd the middle shot not because it is a girl but because I like the centered composition. I have also HL'd it not because it's RAB but because it was a lovely shot that I found through the main page. I also like the way the yellow in the window plays against the blue in the "ghost" people.

Nice shot RAB

you did have fun ........

I didn't do 1 or 3 because Kathleen was not as still as the others, and RAB's arms are too long :)

I love all of these
*waves*
Absolutely HL worthy IMO

(lol @ Steve's last comments)

cool

yes these are good, but I think the effect could be further improved by having your models "posing" in action shots!

brilliant! good ones!

a weekend in the city is amazing by the way =)

Silly question, but I love the effects created with long exposure shots - but how do you do them? surely not with a phone-cam?

Well done!

I like your long arms :)

Niceness. What exposure settings did you use?

Oooh... Cheers Steve! And thanks for all the comments. I've just read through all the highlighting stuff in the forum (and GA moblog), and will hopefully participate when I'm not so bogged under with work. Oh! And funny you should mention my arms as my labmates used to call me Monkeyboy because of my inordinately long limbs. For some reason that mutated into Dr. Monkeypoo, but as far as I'm aware there was no scatological incident that preceeded this change.

Hobo> I only thought about that afterwards I wanted to make it look like we'd beamed down from somewhere.

Taniwha> Yup :) I took lots of long exposure shots at the top of the stairs with loads of other people with cameras, then headed to ground level to get some with us in. I had my camera balancing on the skirting against the wall.

UxB> these were taken with my Lumix, so I could adjust shutter speed manually.

You CAN actually adjust cam-phone shutter speeds (and lower-end digital cameras) depending on your model (it needs to be autofocus for a start). You can do it by focussing the phonecam either in the dark or at a bright light source, then moving to the subject and fully pressing the shutter button. In the case of the former, the cam will record dark exposure settings when you focus, so will give a longer exposure when taking a photo of the subject (giving you something like this photo), and in the latter the exposure will be shortened. I often focus on a bright object before taking nighttime scenery shots with my phonecam because it reduces the exposure time and prevents blur from your hand wobbling. The results are variable though as it can bugger up the focus and isn't compensated by the aperture.

DocD> These were between 4 and 6 seconds I think.

Thanks for the advice :)

These are *fabulous* shots. I like them all. Thanks for the word on shutter speeds. I'll have to see what I can coax my cool-pix into doing for me. :)