■Produce light trails. At night, car headlights and taillights and other moving
sources of illumination can generate interesting light trails, as shown in Figure 7.7.
Your camera doesn’t even need to be mounted on a tripod; hand-holding the D7000
for longer exposures adds movement and patterns to your streaky trails. If you’re
shooting fireworks, a longer exposure may allow you to combine several bursts into
one picture.
■Blur waterfalls, etc. You’ll find that waterfalls and other sources of moving liquid
produce a special type of long-exposure blur, because the water merges into a fan-
tasy-like veil that looks different at different exposure times, and with different
waterfalls. Cascades with turbulent flow produce a rougher look at a given longer
exposure than falls that flow smoothly. Although blurred waterfalls have become
almost a cliché, there are still plenty of variations for a creative photographer to
explore. (See Figure 7.8.)
■Show total darkness in new ways.Even on the darkest, moonless nights, there is
enough starlight or glow from distant illumination sources to see by, and, if you use
a long exposure, there is enough light to take a picture, too.
Chapter 7 ■Advanced Techniques 189
Figure 7.6
This European
alleyway is
thronged with
people, but
with the camera
on a tripod, a
30-second expo-
sure rendered
the passersby
almost invisible.