how to shoot light trails
Last Saturday Night a group of us got together on the South Street Bridge and shot lights, and cars and buildings. We had a great time. Even strangers on the street stopped to join in and shoot with us.
I am the organizer of a local Meet Up and it has been a goal of mine to take this group to the next level by offering various types of educational photographic experiences. By shooting light trails each photographer had the opportunity to practice long exposure for 3, 5 and in some cases as long as long as 15 seconds. Shooting in manual mode and learning what your camera can do. My philosophy is this: being a natural light photographer means learning to shoot at night as well. Otherwise you are just a day time photographer.
For me these images took a lot of trial and error, I was out shooting a few times before I was actually able to feel comfortable teaching this technique to others. You will find lots of information about shooting this type of work and I will follow suite when I say there really isn’t any right setting for it or perfect lens. It all depends on you and your location and what ISO you favor when you see your image. For me, these images were shot with my 50mm at am ISO of 200 F/20 for 15 sec. The photographer next to me used a zoom lens at 4 sec. Personal preference.
