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LIGHT TRAILS – Topic 5

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Photographing light trails can be fun, so I was grateful for this little push to get me out at night to capture some. Because my husband was suffering too badly from his allergies last night, we did not head to downtown Jacksonville as planned to capture shots of a busy freeway for this requirement. Instead, I settled for catching some shots at Beaches Town Center at the nearby beach community of Neptune Beach, Florida, which is a hub of activity even on a Thursday evening!

Image ©Diane Macdonald. All Rights Reserved.
^{Click on the image to view full screen!}

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Shooting light trails is the opposite of shooting high-speed photography. Instead of shooting at very high speeds, you have to shoot at very slow speeds to catch the trails and make the cars and anything or anyone else moving fast become invisible or ghost like!

Image ©Diane Macdonald. All Rights Reserved.
^{Click on the image to view full screen!}

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Here is how I set up my camera to capture these shots:

1. I secured it on a tripod.
2. I set the mirror lock-up function in the custom functions of my camera. This was to prevent the camera from moving when the mirror opened and closed and causing motion blur in the areas of the image that need to stay sharp.
3. I attached my remote control
4. In the manual settings I fixed the settings at f16 for 25 seconds at 200 ISO
5. I waited till a few cars were entering and leaving the small intersection, and got the shots

Image ©Diane Macdonald. All Rights Reserved.
^{Click on the image to view full screen!}

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I chose Light Trails as my fifth Topic in Task 3 of the Sndbox Summer Camp Photography/Filmmaking Quest. The third task for the @sndbox Photography Quest is to photograph at least 5 out of 8 different topics and to write about them and how they were captured. Read about it here.

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Image ©Diane Macdonald. All Rights Reserved.
^{Click on the image to view full screen!}

All images were created with the following settings:

Camera	EOS 5D Mark II
Lens	EF50mm f/1.4 USM
Exposure	25.0 sec; f/16; ISO 200
Post-processing	Adobe Photoshop® CC 2018, Adobe Camera Raw

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Check out some of my stock shots featuring light trails on Getty : Atlanta at night here, here and here. I have also experimented with creating light trails operating the zoom while clicking the shutter, as in this image of St. Augustine, Florida and in this abstract shot.

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For those interested in participating in the #wiwcontest, you can find the rules for and the theme for this week here. Be sure to join us! All SBD from that post will be shared with the 3 winners!

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Thanks for taking the time to read this! I appreciate it. Please check out my photography-101 account here for tips and tutorials about photography.

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