Taking long exposure traffic photos
Everyone has seen those photos of streams of car lights traveling into the darkness, creating a surreal effect of white and red beams in an otherwise dark environment.
Night photography such as this is a lot of fun, challenging and is an excellent way to get to grips with the technical mechanics of photography. What you need, to take photos such as this is patience, a tripod, a great vantage point, a well traveled road, some luck, and a good understanding of, or willingness to learn about, aperture and shutter speeds. The first thing you need to do is find a bridge over a busy road (motorways are excellent subjects), or a high rise building overlooking a city or road. Basically you need a vantage point from which you have a clear unobstructed view over the road, or city. The best time to do this is just after the sun sets; this way you get a great dusky type of light and most people are on the road going home. By getting ready at sunset you will get a range of different lighting situations as it will obviously keep getting darker.
Now, once you have found your spot, and are overlooking the traffic. Set up your tripod. It is important that the tripod is set up to be very sturdy, as even the slightest movement will be evident in the photo. (Tip for you if you are using a light weight tripod, such as an aluminium one, they often have a hook at the base of the head, try hanging your camera bag from there, as it will weigh the tripod down).
An important factor is obviously creating a strong composition. As you know, your eye will naturally follow the light trails that you will create in the image, so keep this in mind when you take the shot. To get a strong composition, make it so that the lines created lead the eye across the photo, the longer you can keep the eye trailing the picture, the stronger and more interesting it will be.
Now that the set up and framing has been done and you have a good idea of what you are looking for, it’s time to get to the technical stuff. You are going to have to adjust your aperture and shutter speed, to create a suitable exposure. The easiest way to do this is to set your camera to Shutter Priority (Tv on a lot of Cameras). This function will automatically adjust the aperture for your shutter speed setting. So let’s say you select a shutter speed of 5 seconds, your aperture will be set to a recommended value. If you are very comfortable with the technical aspects then I recommend setting the camera to manual, and adjusting the aperture yourself.
Now that you have set the camera to the correct settings, you will need to work out the time you require, so count how long it takes a car to travel
through your frame. Once that is established set your shutter speed to roughly that time period, and if using manual mode, set your aperture accordingly. The logic behind setting the exposure is the longer the shutter curtain stays open, the more light will travel onto the sensor, and thus the smaller the diaphragm opening (aperture) will need to be to stop the photos from overexposing. This means that you want a small aperture, which is represented by a large f-stop number, however, if your aperture is too small, then too little light will get in and you will end up with an underexposed image. That is why I recommend using the Tv setting, until you are comfortable with this concept. You need to be careful when taking long exposures that the camera is dead still as the slightest movement will be evident. (Tip: SLRs will create camera shake when the mirror flicks closed, therefore set the “mirror lockup” function, which removes this problem. Secondly if you push the shutter release too hard you may also create a slight shake, if you have problems with this, a trigger release is a possible solution.)
Night photography takes a while to get right and will require a few trial shots, which is where the patience comes in. The luck comes in with having shots where cars fill up all the lanes, do not change lanes over the framed period, and do not use an indicator – you will see what I mean if you try this. Good luck and have fun.