Long Exposure Flower
Posted: November 18, 2011 Filed under: Macro, Nature, Photo | Tags: 50mm, 50mm f1.8, capture, DSLR, experiment, f1.8, flower, flowers, lens, nature, photo, photograph, photographer, photographers, photography, photos, pic, pics, SLR 9 CommentsAlthough you can’t really tell….
2.0 sec at f4.0, ISO 200
Raynox DCR-250 Macro Adapter
Edited inLightroom
Why did I do a long exposure if you can’t really tell?
The answer is “car trouble”.
A I posted on my twitter, @korinekphoto, yesterday I ran into a bit of “car trouble”. The trouble was less about the car, and more about me leaving the lights on and draining the battery (for the second day in a row….). It has been raining the past two days and I’ve had my lights on for safety, but haven’t remembered or noticed they’re on when I leave the car.
How did “car trouble” cause me to do a long exposure photograph? Well the answer to that is that I didn’t get home until about 7:30pm. At that time it was already getting dark, plus there was less light due to the heavy fog. I had to get out my tripod and have a long shutter speed just to get a proper exposure!!
Luckily there was absolutely no wind, so you can’t really tell that it was a 2 second exposure. I think I could do a long exposure of a flower in the wind to make some kind of artistic composition, but I was too tired to try something like that. Interestingly enough, the only thing I noticed in my long exposures was that the longer the shutter was open, the more of a colour cast the white balance added to the photo.
So it all ended up working out alright. I have to express my gratitude to my friend (and fellow photo enthusiast) Stew who was willing to drive down and give me a boost. Thanks Stew! 🙂
While I was waiting for Stew I did take a couple of other photos, but I did not have the Raynox Macro adapter, and I was too upset to fiddle around with the tripod. So I bumped up the ISO and used a larger aperture to get the following picture:
1/60 at f2.0, ISO400
Edited in Lightroom
Not bad for some late evening shots! 😛
Matt
50mm 
The first picture is quite beautiful. I purchased a Nikon D7000 a couple months ago along with three camera lenses—the 18-105, 55-300, and one in the ranges less than 18. Though a novice, my hope is to be able to capture images such as yours. It helps to see others use these such type lenses and take pictures with dramatic results. Kudos to you.
Thank you! I’m happy with how it turned out as well. I’m sure you will be (are?) very happy with your D7000 purchase. I also know that you will be able to capture images as good and I’m sure even better than mine. The biggest piece of advice I can give you is to move your feet rather than relying on zooming. This was probably the biggest lesson I learned when I first started! Thanks for reading! 🙂
Good job! I can only imagine how frustrated you must have been – were you close to using your “angry face”? I hope not! Water drops on flowers are very pretty and these are BIG drops.
I was more frustrated that I had done it two days in a row!!! 😛
Yeah, I noticed that a lot of the flowers were holding much larger drops than I’m used to, but I do like the way they looked.
Beautiful!
Thanks Nicole! I appreciate your visit and I hope that you participate in the challenges! 🙂
They are some fine shots. The long exposure has added a vibrancy that may have been missing from a shorter shot. Nice work
I appreciate your feedback! I actually found the photo of the flower to have too much saturation due to the long exposure so I pulled back on it quite a bit when I edited it. But I agree that having that saturation to work with in the first place is helpful!
Nice Macro shots!