My Longest Long Exposure Shot Yet

For New Year's day I relaxed and didn't do much of anything past messing around on the computer. Until late afternoon, when I looked outside and saw some great cirrus clouds developing. I have been waiting for a sunset with good cloud coverage ever since I purchased a variable ND filter. The shot that I envision is one clouds streaking across the skyline of downtown Hamilton, with golden hour light giving it a little splash of color.

I packed up my gear and made my way to Sam Lawrence park on the escarpment overlooking downtown. Probably my least favorite spot to do photo's, because despite the great view of the city. It is the most normie photo location! Just about everyone in the city has photo's of/from there.

As soon as I got to the park, I realized that my vision would not be possible on this night. The nice white cirrus cloud formations were all above the area of the city on top of the escarpment and downtown had several dark, slow moving clouds.

But what the hell, I was there so why not try anyway? This first shot of the skyline was done with the settings: Shutter 10 minutes, F3.5, ISO 100, ND filter at 8 stop.

Happy with the shot, it was still lacking in cloud movement so I adjusted to a Shutter speed of 15 minutes, F7.1, ISO 100, ND filter at 8 stop.

Definitely not that shots that I have envisioned, These two were good enough for me to call it a night, well that and the fact that I was so cold that I was shivering. Might have played a little bit of a role in that decision too lol.

Although a 15 minute exposure is far from unheard of, it is by far the longest that I have attempted yet. Which for me is an accomplishment that is going to be built on in the near future. I will get my envisioned shot!

I'm going to end this post with a shot in the same location earlier in the sunset (30 second exposure) and a couple of the cirrus clouds.