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How I Got the Shot – Light Trails

Vanelli 02/27/2016 3

Several years ago I was with a group of friends at Photoshop World in Las Vegas. After class, we decided to photograph the strip. We took the usual Vegas photos the Vegas sign, Luxor and surrounding hotels. As it got later, we focused on long exposures, capturing brake lights of cars passing by. This created beautiful light trails. Well, when the cars didn’t stop they do! A buddy of mine showed us a cool trick. She held her hand in front of the lens to prevent light from passing through. I asked what she was doing. She said, Shhh. Im counting! After she was done, she taught me her technique that lead to how I got the shot.

Controlled Long Exposure

Putting your hand or, better yet, a piece of black foam core in front of your lens prevents light from coming in. This will help you control long exposures when photographing light trails. In the Las Vegas example I mentioned, we were in a spot that had stop-and-go traffic. By controlling the long exposure, I was able to photograph only moving cars. Using a tripod, I set my aperture to f/11 with an ISO of 200. This gave me a shutter speed of about 5 seconds. I took a quick test shot to see how it looked, then I put the shutter into bulb mode.

Using a remote trigger, I followed these steps:

  1. I waited for the first car to drive by.
  2. When the car was about to pass, I trigger the shutter and started to count.
  3. As the car passed, I stopped counting, placed my hand in front of the lens and kept my thumb on the remote trigger.
  4. I repeated the process until I reached 5 seconds, then I let go of the trigger.
Light Trails Test Shot
Light Trails Complete

Although it took about 19 seconds, the camera only recorded about 5 seconds of light passing through.

5 second exposure
19 Seconds

Fireworks with Light Trails

I applied the same concept while photographing fireworks at Disney as boats passed by.

Downtown Disney-4866

For more “How I Got the Shot” articles, click here

  • About
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Vanelli

Robert Vanelli (Vanelli to his friends) is a working photographer, educator and author living in Florida. After a successful career as a three-time, Triple Crown Karate champion, Vanelli turned his attention to teaching the visual arts. As an experienced educator, Vanelli has created several photography and digital workflow programs including Click for Kids.

Currently he is teaching workshops, writing for Photofocus and creating tutorials for various plug-in companies and for the Vanelli and Friends series.

You can find out more about Vanelli at www.VanelliandFriends.com

Latest posts by Vanelli (see all)

  • Blurry pictures: What causes them and how to get sharp photos - February 9, 2019
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  • Would you pay 3.5 million dollars for this photo? - February 4, 2019

Categories: Photography Tutorials Tags: Control HIGTS location long exposure remote trail trigger

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. H+L Ooms says

    February 27, 2016 at 12:34 pm

    Interesting to read this! Try this!

    Sent from my iPad

    >

     
    Reply
  2. janelily7 says

    February 27, 2016 at 2:52 pm

    Thanx for this, interesting. I’ll try this on my next trip to the city. I wonder how many tries it’ll take me.

     
    Reply
  3. Mary Ann DeSocio says

    February 28, 2016 at 11:13 am

    thanks for this article. You told me this once before. I didn’t follow up on it but this time I will.

     
    Reply

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