I recently got my hands on a ND100 filter. I've never used an ND filter before, but I had to purchase one for my adventures into the world of video. For my videos I ordered a variable ND filter going up to 5 stops (ND32), so that I can keep the shutterspeed at 1/50 at all times, which creates the most natural motion blur.
As I was researching ND filters and their use cases, I learned about some of the strongest ND filter: ND100. This is the type of filter that darkens image so much that you can play around with really long shutter speeds at day time. And that's what I set out to do.
Below here are some of my experiments.
Industrial transportation
For my first tests, I cycled to Trade Port, the dystopian industrial logistical center between Sevenum and Venlo. There is lots of motion: massive windmills, truckloads of trucks, and trainloads of trains. Excellent stuff to burn into pixels.
The classic long shutter speed subject: moving traffic. I played around with various shutter speeds. I tried some videos as well, but it was more difficult to achieve an satisfactory motion blur there. I'm not sure why that didn't work, I'll have to read up on that.
Here I waited half an hour for the train to come. I think the concept of speed is best captured in the diagonal compostition of the landscape picture. It helps the brain to process the speed and motion of the train. The portrait cut-out feels more static, but it highlights the windmill so much nicer than the landscape version. I decided to included them both versions in this post, just log my thoughts on it. Logging my thougths will help me further my experiments.
This photo is pretty cool to me. I was hoping to capture the motion of the traffic in both mirrors, but the shape of the mirrors make it all a bit fuzzy. It makes me excited to return at night time, because I'd love to see the red rear lights drawn out in the left mirror and the white headlights in the right mirror. Might be a cool picture!
Here I tried to keep the center tulip in focus, while spinning the camera. I didn't use a tripod (not sure how that would work), but still managed to get a cool 'dizzing' effect.
This picture doesn't have anything to do with long exposure time, I just liked the frame of this picture. The creepy smile of the tank behind bars, hmm.
Urban anthroposophic movement
Five days after my first experiments on Trade Port, I went to the city center of Venlo to snap some long exposure pictures of humans. I hoped to get a shot of a busy shopping street with people walking past left right and center of the camera. I didn't get exactly that picture, but I got some interesting results nevertheless.
The motion blur becomes even more surreal in black and white. The sea-weed-like swirly-wirlies are human faces that are drawn out. I love the shoes on the street as well! The shutterspeed was just perfect to capture the short time they stay stagnant on the floor.
The closer to the camera, the higher the relative speed, the more motion blur. Did I phrase that correctly? The cyclist in the foreground has a similar speed to the cyclists in the background, but the motion blur is exaggerated because there is more displacement relative to the camera in the frame. That makes sense to me in my brain, but I'll read up on it to check if it's actually the case.
The shop owner asked me if I was a journalist, taking pictures of his shop. I had to dissapoint him.
Some boat pictures.
I wanted to water to turn into a flat ice plane. Might need even longer shutter speed for that, and some more waves. And a more interesting composition.
Context matters! (Tree pics)
A few days after the human experiments, it started to get very windy. The trees were very waves, which inspired me to get out and capture that movement on camera.
I quickly realised that the movement of the trees was best captured relative to a static object. The juxtaposition of static and movement gives context. The moving trees on itself can look very surreal, which can also be a cool vibe to go for, but for these pictures I wanted context.
Exposure time: 3,2 seconds
Wind chimes and trees.
Exposure time: 10 seconds
I wanted to push the movement of the trees a bit more, but unfortunately the windchime got completely lost in this long shutterspeed.
Exposure time: 25 seconds
This hazelnut tree looks beautifull in the wind. You can see how strong she is in the wind. One side is affected by the wind, but the strong branches hold off the wind and keep the otherside very still. Looking this intently at the tree made me appeciate those qualities more. I guess that's another cool side effect of photography.
Exposure time: 2,5 seconds
Smokey chimney! Did it trick you for a second? I hope it did. What appears to be smoke is actually a branch of a Japanese cherry tree. A fun experiment of recontextualising matter by playing with their dynamic properties.
Below you can check out the branch captured by a more conventional shutterspeed.
Exposure time: 1/15 seconds
Tripod bike carrier plan
For long exposure photo's you need to carry a tripod. There's no way around it. I brought mine in my sling bag, the one I made myself. It was a bit of a pain in the ass the get the thing out of the bag everytime I wanted to use it. Then I thought: why not attach it to the frame of the bike, like a frame bag? With some easy straps or something. That might be a nice sollution. Will try it next time.
