Happy October! It’s the beginning of autumn, holidays, and cooler weather. For me this time of year in Muskoka is the prime long exposure season, so I wanted to share how long exposures work since I’ve realized it’s a subject many find interesting. 

Whether it be at an artist talk, a game night with friends or a family dinner, one of the most common questions I get about photography in general is about long exposure photography and most want to know “How do you do that?” And “How can I do that?”

My best recommendation is, take a minute, take a breath and then let’s dive in; this blog post will probably start to sound like a science class by the end and it may be a bit technical!

Long exposure photography is a highly technical and complicated form of photography in my experience. It requires a solid understanding of how photography works as a mechanical process, as well as being able to assess your environment and understand how every component and variable will affect the look of the final image you create.

First, before you worry about hiking to the coolest waterfall, darkest sky reserve, composition, or editing styles, you need to understand the basic camera functions for long exposure.

To create a long exposure photograph you need to physically keep your shutter on your camera open for an extended period of time to allow light to hit your sensor longer.

 This allows us to blend fast moving water and create astrophotography images (since light from the stars is trillions of kilometers away). Most photographs are captured with a high shutter speed to freeze the motion and so our subjects aren’t blurry. For example a family photograph during a mid afternoon session is generally captured at a starting shutter speed of 1/200 which literally translates to 1 200th of a second. Long exposures on the other hand range from 1 second exposures all the way up past 10 minute exposures. The longer the exposures of each photograph the longer light is hitting your sensor and the more light in your image. This is where the technical understanding of your camera is so important.

 You can’t shoot long exposures on any auto mode you have to be in manual or bulb mode (I’ll explain bulb a bit later). I’m not going to go into the exposure triangle (aperture, ISO, shutter speed) along with using your light meter ,but you need to know how these work for long exposure. 

Now that we’ve gone over the technical aspect of long exposure photography, I’ll walk you through how I would create a simple waterfall, long exposure and an astrophotography landscape. You can try these for yourself too, all you need is your DSLR, tripod, and Photoshop for post production!

So the first step is to choose what time of day to photograph the waterfall. We know that we need to let a lot of light hit the sensor to create that really soft flowing water effect, so choosing a time of day where there’s not a lot of natural light in the area is key. I recommend either right around sunrise or sunset, when the sun is lower in the sky and won’t overexpose your image.

 If you do experiment mid-day and try to photograph a long exposure, what you’ll notice is when you’re reading your light meter it’ll tell you that you can’t get your shutter speed down low enough to create the long exposure, allowing you to blend and soften the water. When shooting any type of long exposures of any kind you’ll need a tripod, this is always recommended to avoid camera shake, since the slightest movement or vibration will cause the image to blur. 

So now that we’ve chosen the time of day and gotten the camera setup on the tripod, we have to actually set up the image. 

All long exposure landscapes should be shot at a high aperture (F10 and up) to counter act the low shutter speed and properly expose your image. Using autofocus during the day is perfectly fine, since you can see to focus. Though, you’ll want to focus on a stationary part of your waterfall (a rock or the bank) because trying to focus on the water can be difficult in a long exposure.

These are the basic steps for photographing a long exposure of a waterfall. After this, the real skill comes in patience, and finding a passion to experiment with techniques and composition. When I’m photographing a waterfall I’ll spend anywhere from 1-3 hours depending on the size of the area I’m capturing and will experiment with different angles, focal lengths, and exposure lengths until I get the look I want. 

The only additional accessories that I recommend for long exposures are a remote shutter to avoid camera shake even further and an ND filter. These are dark filters that go all the way from 2 stops up to 16 and can help achieve longer daylight long exposures.

Astrophotography is very similar to photographing a waterfall (daylight long exposure). However, it comes with much more variability due to photographing in complete darkness. I always recommend shooting astrophotography with a full frame sensor. Even with a full frame sensor your camera still has limitations in long exposures such as banding, image noise and hot pixels from sensor heat. A full frame sensor also allows for much better performance in low light, better dynamic range allowing you to save more under or over exposed RAW images, and more pixels in a sensor allows for more depth in details. This is especially important if you’re an artist that wants to print large size images.

So now I’ll walk you through photographing a simple landscape astrophotography long exposure. Like our daylight long exposure first we need to choose the location and the time of night. Astrophotography is nearly impossible in a populated area like Toronto or other populated areas because of light pollution. You’ll want to find a place away from the cities and large towns.

 I’m really grateful here in Muskoka, I am able to photograph long exposures right in my backyard, since there isn’t a lot of light pollution in the northern part of Muskoka. Provincial parks up here in Northern Ontario and dark sky preserves are a great alternative though, if you don’t live in a rural area. For a final image where I want the landscape to be part of the image I like getting to the location just before dark so I can still see enough to set up my camera on the tripod. I will make a point to say you don’t need ND filters for astrophotography landscapes. 

Once you have your shot set up and you wait for it to become fully dark, exposing and focusing your image is the next challenge. Once you can see the stars with your own eyes, it’s dark enough to capture solid sharp stars with your camera, astrophotography can start to get very complex from this point and it’s easy to get overwhelmed. Some astrophotographers use Star tracking apps to help capture deep space images and even setting up custom Linux based software to help organize your dark, flat and bias frames as you photograph the galaxies or specific stars. If you’ve researched any of  that though, put it all out of your mind, this isn’t that complicated for now! The basic things you’ll need to do now are learning to focus, capture the shots and process your first final astrophotography image.

Focusing in the total darkness is difficult and takes a lot of practice to master. The best method is to manually focus because auto focus can be highly unreliable in low light, because it struggles to find a point to focus with nothing but a dark abyss in the viewfinder. Once you’ve found the correct focus, this is where bulb mode and a remote shutter can be useful. Regular DSLRs can only take up to a 30 second exposure in manual mode. If you want to photograph the stars as trails instead of solid points you’ll want to go up over a minute, to do this you connect your remote shutter to your camera, switch over to bulb mode and press the remote shutter. If however you want your stars as sharp points you’ll need to keep your exposure under 30 seconds. Then it’s personal preference if you prefer to use the remote shutter or the one on your camera.

How I photograph astrophotography landscapes is to take a series of identical shots focusing just on the stars. You’ll know they’re in focus, because they’ll appear like sharp white dots, and then take a series of images in the same position focusing instead on the brightest point of the landscape. This method is about as close to reliable as you can get, astrophotography takes a lot of time and a lot of patience sitting in the dark and solid understanding of Photoshop!

Now onto post production, I don’t use this method as often with daylight long exposures, but with astrophotography landscapes you almost always have to composite (combine multiple images) the images to achieve perfect focus. 

Earlier in the blog, I mentioned when you’re photographing your astrophotography landscape that I recommend taking a series of identical images of the stars and the landscape, now I’m going to explain why. 

Now we’re going to focus stack the images, which will take the sharpest parts of all the images and blend them together. First, open photoshop, and then load all the raw images into a stack, selecting the automatically attempt to align sources option. Once it’s all loaded into Photoshop, click edit and in the dropdown select auto blend layers, the popup should have already selected stack and just click okay. After this if it stacks properly you can flatten the image or create a command stamp layer and start any color grading or other retouching.

Long exposure photography can be a beautiful art medium in photography, and if it’s something that interests you I definitely recommend trying it. Just remember patience is key when learning this form of photography. I am always happy to answer questions about astrophotography and daylight long exposures. You can reach me through the contact page on my website or through my Instagram, or if you’re in the area come out to one of my  artist talks.

If you want to see more of my astrophotography work, you can explore my Fine Art and Astrophotography Galleries. If you’re interested in adding a print to your home, browse my available prints.