Long exposure photography (Silky water)

Hello everyone,
welcome to another photography post of mine. This time I'll focus on long exposure photography with some tips on how to make silky water effect.

Lisine, Serbia

You have probably already seen images of silky, misty waterfall, sea or river and if you have wondered how to make such beautiful image, well secret is in long exposure. You will need to set camera in manual mode, set aperture to very high values like f22 and set shutter speed to somewhere around 1 second and ISO as low as you can. You will need to experiment a little with settings until you find satisfying result. When shooting with such long shutter speeds you will need to use tripod and remote trigger (or set cameras timer) to avoid any shakes. It takes a little time but results are stunning. One thing that can help you a lot are also Neutral Density (ND) filters. ND filter reduces amount of light that falls to sensor so you can user lower f numbers.

Lisine, Serbia

One thing that can ruin a perfect photo for you is wind. If in your composition there are trees or grass that waves on wind it will also get blurry.

Lisine, Serbia

Other trick that you can use when you only have your camera with you without tripod and no place where to put camera is to capture two images (probably a lot more and then select only two images that you can use :) ). First image would be "normal" with fast shutter speeds so that everything is nicely in focus. Second image would be exactly same composition but with long exposure. You need to try and be still as much as possible when taking that second exposure and take couple images so that you can select one where water is nice looking. Then you will need to use photoshop and go to File->Scripts->Load files into Stack.. After that in layers window you have to select both layers (images) and go to Edit->Auto-align layers and select automatic (when holding camera from hand you won't be able to align both images perfectly but photoshop will do this flawlessly for you).

Lisine, Serbia

When both images are aligned you need to move image with long exposure to top and select it (in layers window) then select eraser tool and use big brush with 0 hardness. After that you need to erase carefully everything except water so that you blend sharp background from image with fast shutter speed and silky water from image with long exposure.

Niška Banja, Serbia

I hope You liked this photos and tips for making them. Be sure to follow as there will be more to come.