SteemitPhotoChallenge #50 - Entry 3 - Ridge racer

Long exposure is how to get light trails, which are not to be confused with chemtrails. Light trails are simple to shoot as all that is required is a little patience and like this example, cars. This was quite late at night which meant, cars were hard to come by and as you can see there is a little snow on the ground. It was coooold. Although not yet full winter, it was about minus 10 Celsius and my fingers were frozen. I am yet to find a suitable pair of gloves for real winter. This was taken not too long after this tunnel (the longest in Finland) was opened.

It is not processed very heavily but unfortunately, when I exported it, I didn't export the shot details. It is taken on an Olympus EM-1 with a 12-40 2.8 lens and I am pretty sure it was at ISO100 and the shot time was around 15 seconds.

Interestingly, I posted some of these shots on Twitter when I took them and the company that organised the traffic systems for the tunnel contacted me and asked to use them in their advertising. They had hired a professional photographer to take images of the tunnel and they were unhappy with the result. I saw some examples and it looked as if he had shot them in a rush on a point and shoot camera and hadn't even bothered to try processing at all. I exaggerate a little, but not much.

What I like about light trails is that they give the sense of speed kind of like a panning shot does for a a fast moving object but inverse. The pan will blur the background to give the sense of speed as the camera is moving (hopefully at the same speed as the object) on the subject whereas in a set shot, the object moves through the frame and the background is held still. Both have their uses and their own set of skills but the pan is harder as the camera is not set.

Taraz
[ a Steemit original ]