Long Exposure Landscape in Anjafa Beach
My First Trial to Long Exposure Landscape using a Neutral Density Filter
Written on the 18th of December, 2022
Since I started photography, I have always been fascinated by long-exposure photography. Long exposure can achieve multiple effects, such as silky-smooth water, light trails, painting with light, and flowing clouds. I wanted to create a long-exposure image on my own during the day that produces these long-exposure effects. I only knew where to start once I came across LEE filters during my google search on the topic. I found on their website videos that explained how professional photographers do it and got interested.
I purchased their foundation kit and a 15-stop Super Stopper neutral density LEE filter. Since Kuwait is always sunny, I thought I could shoot long exposures during midday.
I went to Anjafa Beach at noon to practice. The sky was cloudless, and the sea had different colours from shore to the horizon, creating distracting colours across the distance. Even though I got great compositions, I could not get the long exposure effect I was looking for. I ended up with one excellent image with a nice silky-smooth water effect. However, the sky was cloudless, hence the need for Adobe Photoshop's magic. I did a sky replacement, turned the image to black and white, and added motion blur to the sky, creating a nice long exposure effect. Even though it's not straight out of the camera, the image turned out to be beautiful.
I took other long-exposure images, but they differed from what I expected. However, I took some images without the neutral density filter and long-exposure settings and got some interesting images. I managed to create dramatic, creative effects with these images in Adobe Photoshop, which turned out to be lovely.
The Gear I Used
