Long Exposure Street Photography in the Rain
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Long Exposure can be a great tool to expand your Street Photography portfolio and keep you inspired shooting in the streets you may be all-too-familiar with.
Long Exposure can create a sense of motion, great for quiet cities, or particularly quiet days. Used correctly, long exposure can create a sense of calmness, or even more abstract feelings of dreams, and/or memories.
In this particular example, photographer Adam MacKintosh, uses Long Exposure in the rain, on the streets of Helsinki, Finland. This gives the viewer a sense of the visual blur we can experience whilst being out in bad weather, and helps the photographer avoid capturing “too clearly” the uninspiring fashion of windbreakers and jackets.
Check this video out for a great example of how to use Long Exposure Photography on the street.
How to do Long Exposure Photography with Motion Blur?
The main component we want to have here, is a longer time that the camera’s shutter is open.
For starters, I would recommend starting at a shutter speed of 1 second.
From there, take a few tests and adjust shorter or longer, depending on your taste of “how much” blur you would like in the image.
Our longer shutter speed is going to let a lot of light in, so we’re going to adjust two more things.
Set your ISO to as low as possible.
If you are shooting film, consider film around speeds of 100 or 200.
This will give you the least light possible entering the camera, and as a bonus, the highest possible quality image.
And finally, you’re most likely still going to need to limit the amount of light coming into the camera to avoid over exposed images.
Adjust your aperture to f8.
It’s going to vary depending on how bright of a day/night you’re working in. But start there and go up or down to your preferred exposure.
You can also consider the use of ND filters, which limit the amount of light entering the lens. But I would suggest you start with the above suggestions first before you go spending money that you don’t need to.
Bonus Tip:
Consider moving the camera in various ways, just as you have pressed the shutter. This will add “extra” blur/movement to your image. Experiment for desired effect!
