You can picture a fleeting moment, freeze time if you like.  But you can also capture a summation of events in one place.  The long exposure allows time to be integrated into a single image and low light or night-time photography is one way to do this.

My interest started back in the film years when long exposures were largely guesswork, especially as you couldn’t see the results for, maybe, days.

Digital has made it easier but the anticipation of seeing what you’ve done after an hour or more with the shutter open is a keen thrill.

The star trail photos in this collection involve a sequence of say 80 shots each of about 40 seconds, layered to make a single image.  There is software to help with this, but it can be cold waiting for an hour on a winter’s night under clear skies!

The Milky Way can take less time, maybe thirty seconds under dark skies, and you will do better with a high ISO setting and/or a fast lens (F2.8 or bigger) if you can.  Some photographers use a star tracker to freeze the movement of the stars and some spectacular shots can be achieved, but I haven’t done that here.

Car light trails can be fun especially from a high vantage point but watch out for very high contrast ratios, and street lights can spoil good shots.

You can also get a range of very light to very dark with moonlight so try to get the moon’s disc behind something such as a tree or building, so you don’t get the disc in the shot; then the dynamic range is more manageable.

If you have a really long lens, photos of the moon’s disc can provide some super detailed shots of the surface topography including mountains at the periphery, but you should probably use spot metering if you have it, and some image cropping will still be needed.

There will always be a need for some post processing, to help reduce contrast, but do watch out for digital noise in the darker areas.  Noise reduction software can help here but sadly not much if the exposure was really too low!

Go with a friend or colleague if you can, cross fertilization of ideas can be helpful and walking together can help dispel anxiety if the way home is through dark streets.