5 Steps to taking incredible long exposures at night

A busy freeway at night with flowing streams of headlights, a desert sky filled with thousands of stars, the northern lights. We've probably all seen long exposure photography and marveled at how cool it looks, but how does one actually pull it off? Well, it's easier than you may think - here are five steps to shooting some cool long exposures at night.

1. Stabilize it. Short and sweet here, get a tripod and put your camera on it. Doesn't have to be expensive, it just needs to be solid or you'll be looking at a blurry finished product.

2. Focus! This can be a tough one at night. If autofocus isn't an option or isn't working and you're struggling, see if your camera allows you to zoom in on your viewfinder prior to taking the picture to help dial it in. If not, take a few test shots and make adjustments until your focus is nice and sharp.

3. Aperture, also known as F-stop, is how much light your lens is letting into your camera. We want this to be the lowest number possible on your lens (lowest number = most light allowed in). This can pretty much always be found on the lens, and is typically preceded by an "f/". For instance: f/2.8 or f/1.4.

4. ISO. This is the sensitivity of the image sensor in the camera. The higher the number, the brighter your image will be. But this comes at a price: as you go higher, the image will have more "noise" and will appear grainier. ISO is camera-dependent, so experiment with this to see how high you can go and still maintain an acceptable image quality.

5. Shutter speed is how long the image sensor is exposed to light. This is sort of the crux of long-exposure photography, as we're leaving the shutter open for anywhere from a few seconds to upwards of 30 or more, when a typical photo has the shutter remaining open for only a fraction of a second. This is the one you'll want to play around with the most to get the correct exposure for your image. If you're shooting a relatively empty night sky for instance, maybe start with 10-15 seconds. If your image is too dark, make it longer; if it's too bright, make it shorter.

BONUS! 6. Get creative! Play around with different locations, foregrounds, camera angles, etc. to make your image more interesting. You can even mess around with throwing some lights in the mix - take your phone light and shine it on a tree close to the camera for a couple of seconds during the exposure, and watch how it's illuminated in your picture. Or stand in the frame shining your light towards the camera and write your name in the air with it like a sparkler (or hey, use a sparkler); this is called light painting. There are ton of amazing things you can do with long exposures, so experiment and see what you can come up with!

Get in touch! We'd love to hear your questions, comments, and what you want to learn how to do in the photography and videography arenas!

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