Let's play with long exposures!

I found a day when it wasn't raining (not easy, what with all the floods around the rest of England), went into central London, waited for it to get dark, and played around with long shutter speeds/tiny apertures. It was a weird thing to do because 1) the lens I had on my camera isn't exactly brilliant in low light, 2) I didn't bring a tripod with me, and 3) I don't really do long exposures, so there was a hell of a lot of trial and error. There wasn't much I could do to fix point 1, except to turn off vibration reduction and set ISO at the base 100 to reduce drifting and noise. To remedy point 2 I just ended up setting my camera on top of walls, using my lens cap to tilt the camera up or down. This really limited my point of view, but I persevered anyway. Point 3 requires practice, so let's say that these photos are part of that whole "practice" thing.

Hungerford Bridge. I set my camera on top of a concrete wall and pushed the aperture right to the end (f22) which gave me a 20 second shutter. Unfortunately the small aperture highlighted the annoying dust spots under the anti-alias filter (yes, under. Long story!). These were shopped out after. White balance set to daylight to preserve the blue-purple hue. This is probably my favourite picture, I really like the colours and the zig-zaggy pattern cast on the floor from the side lights.

Some kind of Eye in London. I think it's also known as the London Eye? It was lit up red like a big ring of fire for Valentine's Day (even though I took these all on the 13th). I tried my crappy technique of using the smallest aperture to get the longest shutter possible but despite the water looking all smooth and buttery the wheel was blurred out and the shadows were too dark. Those pesky dust spots also remained highly visible. I ended up using f5 with a 2 second shutter for this.

Big Ben Tower and a bunch of buses and taxis. I set my camera down on a really low concrete barrier (visible in the lower right of the frame) and tilted the lens upwards using... a brick! I wasn't able to get the top of the clock tower in frame with my barrier/brick setup, but I do like the light trails from the oncoming traffic. White balance was cooled to get rid of the orangey haze from the street lamps. (f22, 13 secs)

St. James Park. I cut through the park even though it was completely dark, and I liked the red light from the Eye and the white light from the moon shimmering on the lake. I balanced my camera on the narrow hand-rail (making sure the camera was still attached to me!) and took a bunch of long exposures. This one was probably the nicest. I also like the black smudges in the water from the coots that were still floating about. Cooler white balance again to cut through that orange haze in the atmosphere. (f8, 13 secs)

Wellington Arch. I rested my camera on the Royal Artillery Memorial and waited for some cyclists to pass through so I could capture their light trails as well. I like that it looks like the moon is lighting the statue. (f10, 8 secs)


So that was one of my more successful attempts at long exposure photography. A few things I've learned while taking these photos:

• Wrap up warm in the winter nights, especially when you know there are storms on the way.
• Bring a tripod!
• Point-and-shoot tourists will often copy other people with DSLR cameras and take shots from a similar point of view. They may also stand in front of your shot for that photo opportunity...

No big deal really, this was a test shot. And anyway, the ghost tourist looks kind of cool :)

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Google's auto-enhance feature ends up pixelating some of my pictures for some reason. I suppose enhance = create jpeg artifacts. I've turned the feature off but some pics still appear blocky in places. Hopefully I just have to clear my cache.