When you’re looking for something to shoot, sometimes the answer is right in front of your eyes, or perhaps your house: your street. Here’s how to make an everyday street more interesting with long exposures.
Below is a comparison image that shows the difference between shooting a faster shutter speed and a slower shutter speed of the same street in Las Vegas:
The first image is what this scene on the strip looks like to my eyes. This was shot with an EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II USM lens on a Canon 6D at 1/125 s shutter speed, just enough to more or less stop traffic. The cars look like they are parked in the middle of the road because the fast shutter speed froze their motion. Interesting, but not much more than a tourist snapshot.
What most tourists don’t do, however, is bust out the tripod for a long exposure. You can see the results in the second image above. At 6 seconds, the cars stopped at a light still look stationary, but those in motion create streaks of light that look like lasers shooting down the street. Because I used a smaller aperture, point lights begin to look like starburst patterns (though an even smaller aperture would have amplified this effect).
This is a technique that’s best to try when the sun is going down. Without the headlights and tail-lights to create the streaks, shots will tend to be a bit different, but can still be interesting in other ways. Here’s the juxtaposition of traffic in a longer exposure with an unmoving man on a cell phone taken during the day:
At 1/5 of a second, cars blur by Columbus Circle in New York City.
It’s best to take a lot of images and time it to the traffic. Different combinations of cars will produce different results, and a person driving a yellow Ford Focus in a sea of gray cars could make for a more dynamic image if you time it right.
Do you have interesting “street” photography images to share? Post them in the comments below!
