Occasionally the scene presents itself for a little camera painting. I’m looking for vertical or horizontal shapes that I can move the camera parallel with during exposure. See previous post
The Cypress Trees and Paintbrush blooms at Point Lobos made for worthy subjects.
When I was on the California Coast recently, I decided to take numerous exposures of the exact same scene and then blend them in a software program. I also used these jpegs to produce a time lapse video which can be viewed here
But I wanted to see what you could produce if you blend 100 images of a moving scene, like moving waves and clouds. It’s similar to a longer exposure but I took an exposure every 20 seconds for about 35 minutes. Below you’ll also see the result and what the scene looked like with a single normal exposure. I actually shot 2 different scenes and present them but I also show one image where I blend both scenes, which is the bottom image.
So, if you want to get creative, try taking multiple exposures and blending them in Lightroom, Photoshop or stack them with a stacking program like StarStax
Remember to use a tripod, a shutter release or better, an intervalometer, which programs the length between exposures for your camera. You can just sit there and watch the waves crashing upon the beach.
It’s not something Spock and Kirk use to transport themselves through space and time . An intervalometer is really a device you should have if you want to get creative with photography. This gizmo allows you to program the shutter on your camera to take an infinite number of shots at set intervals in order to produce time lapse videos, a series of action photos, stacked photos used in star trail images or depth of field stacking. And what ever else you can imagine. For time lapse videos, I may take a series of 500 photos at an interval of 2 seconds. Yes, you may have to wait patiently for a few hours. The interval depends on what is happening in your frame and the light conditions. Clouds moving quickly through a bright sky should be shot in short intervals of a second or two. You will have to set your camera’s exposure beforehand . You combine these images (Shoot in jpegs) in a software program that will make a video for you. I use Adobe’s Lightroom to make my videos and can alter the length and add music. I purchased this Satechi model ($59)for a Canon camera at half the price of Canon’s model and it works great! http://www.satechi.net/index.php/satechi-wtr-a-wireless-timer-remote-control-shutter
The Satechi unit attaches to your hot shoe and the programmable timer is wireless. Both pieces are battery operated. Below is a sample of a time lapse video I produced with the intervalometer through Lightroom and a star trail photo.
