So, my father told me that "Longer Exposures enhance colors in your landscapes because more shades of color can enter the lens". I find it a little hard to believe any more "shades" of light would be able to enter a lens with a longer exposure time. Doesn't the exposure time (shutter speed) just deal with creating movement? Or is there something I'm missing here?
Depending on length of time and what's in the image there is a possibility there is some truth to that. If you have shadows in an image and a long enough exposure, the movement of the shadows and highlights could light up some darker areas with color. Subtle, but not really worth it due to sensor noise from heat being introduced. I have had some luck with water reflections getting a smoother color rendition from trees since it evens out the motion. Probably the best scenario is sunrise or sunset. If you were to run a 10 minute exposure (for example) at these times with a colorful sunrise (or sunset) the color would move between different cloud layers giving you more color in the clouds. Whether this is worth doing would be very dependant on the comp. I did a 14 minute exposure a couple weeks ago at sunrise and it really made the scene with the colors that were working in the clouds.
You would not get any more color saturation in a scene just because you are running a long exposure (assuming the exposure is exactly the same).
Thanks for the info!