The Complete Guide to Long Exposure Photography

Once you learn to take basic photographs, it is time to try some more creative techniques.
Long exposure photography is a technique where you use slow shutter speeds to create cool effects. This technique can be used to create a wide variety of images, whether landscapes, city scapes, star photographs, or more.
If you are ready to take your photographs to the next level, check out this complete guide. To understand the basics, get tips, and be creatively inspired, keep reading.

What Is Long Exposure Photography and How to Get Started
Have you ever seen a picture of the sea and wondered how the water looks so smooth and soft.
Long exposure photography is a simple way to add some drama to your images without post-processing. It can make gushing water look smooth or transform speeding cars into red and yellow lines.
Continue reading to learn how to master this technique and take your photos to the next level.
The best thing about long exposure photography is that it can be used for many different types of photographs. Long exposure photography usually falls into the following categories.
water, astro photography, light painting, light trails from cars, abstract photography, architecture, and sports.
For some beautiful examples of long exposure photography.

Understanding Exposure
When you are taking a photo, you are capturing light. Hence, understanding exposure is the key to good photography.
3 factors affect exposure: shutter speed, ISO, and aperture.
It is important to understand these factors. If you want to be a good photographer, you need to know how they can positively and negatively affect a photograph. Then you can play around with the settings to get the result you want.
If you are not ready to start with long exposure on a camera, you can use your smartphone. Earlier, smartphone cameras used to be very limited. They had great Auto functions but no Manual Mode. That didn’t let you take creative shots like long exposures.
The good news is, you can do that now!
A Complete Guide to Neutral Density Filters
Many times a photo won’t be perfect due to too much light. This is where an ND filter comes in.
There are different types of ND filters you can use. To understand exactly what an ND filter is and how to use it, read this article.
How to Use an ND Filter to Remove People from Long Exposure Shots
We have all seen those perfect pictures of famous landmarks. But when you go to take your own shots, tourists crowd into your frame, ruining your images. So how can you take the perfect photograph without people in it?
If you are shooting a famous tourist spot or want to capture a lonely beach, but people are ruining your photograph, don’t worry. There is a way to remove people from your photos, without post-processing. All you need to do is capture a long exposure with an ND filter.
To understand how to make people magically disappear from your photos, read this article.
How to Shoot a Long Exposure Without ND Filter
What if you want to take a long-exposure shot in the daytime, but you don’t have an ND filter? You can still get the results you want by using a technique called photo stacking. Read this article to understand the two ways of doing this in detail.