4 Hacks for Long Exposures
Whenever I'm doing street photography, I tend to be mindful of the gear I carry around due to wanting to be as discreet as possible and paying attention to the amount of weight I have to carry. Because of that, I've found ways to avoid bringing my tripod as much as possible. But sometimes, you have to bring your tripod, especially for shots like long exposure cityscapes. In this video, I'll discuss some tips that may help you when doing long exposures on the street with or without your tripod.
1) Handheld Long Exposures
When doing handheld long exposures, you want to be as still as possible as a little shake will affect your final photo. This gets more true the longer your shutter is open for. Because of this, we need to find ways to try to keep as still as possible. One thing I tend to look for when doing handheld long exposures are surfaces around me I'm able to use to help keep still such as walls, rails, even the floor if I'm able to keep the composition as I want it. This lets me lean my body or my camera on a surface, letting me keep still for even longer and getting away with not having to take my tripod with me for photo walks. Now for certain situations, I'm unable to have my camera on the floor or lean my body against a large surface to help keep steady like this shot I took in a convention. What then? This is when you have to resort to some techniques we can do ourselves to steady our camera. To remain as steady as possible, we want to keep our camera as close to our bodies as possible. The more your camera is further away from your body, the more your arms will shake to try and support the weight which leads to shaky photos. Along with that, I keep my stance wide to be as balanced as I can. If your feet are too close together, your balance will be thrown off, leading to shaky photos. Finally, we get into our breathing. Now, you may think, what does breathing have to do with our steadiness? When we breath, there are periods where we are the most stable, which can be seen when shooting an arrow or even shooting a free throw in basketball. That period is when you exhale. Contrary to popular belief, it actually isn't when we hold our breath, which I used to do a lot before, but after switching to shooting when exhaling, I found it much easier and also much more comfortable.
2) Using objects around you
While walking around in the city, you'll see so many random objects that may helpful to stabilize our camera, but the most helpful thing may actually be what we carry with us. If I can stabilize my camera safely on a flat surface, I like to actually use these peak design straps as something to balance the camera. This way, I can get away from long exposures without having to worry about shaking the camera. But really, just being creative with objects you have around you may help you get some long exposures in certain areas. One time, I've even put my camera in my shoe to stabilize my camera on the floor and get a shot of the Tokyo Tower.
3) Mini Tripod
This requires you to have one of these mini tripods. This one is relatively cheap at around $20 or so. When I first bought it, I found it a bit useless as I never found myself using it. However, after bringing it around with me during my travels, I figured how handy a small tripod really is. There are situations where you might not be able to bring your main tripod or you may not want to carry your main tripod around. Whatever the case is, having a small tripod as a substitute has its uses. With this tripod, there is no slit, making it only possible to take pictures in landscape orientation. I have a specific "technique?"/trick that I find the most helpful with this specific small tripod for getting your photos in portrait orientation, though I'm sure you could do this with any small tripod or maybe they may even make this process easier. First, you need to find a ledge or so with enough space for your camera as well as the small tripod to go on. If you are taking a photo in landscape orientation, it's pretty easy. You just put your camera on the tripod and you're set. What I do for photos in portrait orientation is I actually lay the camera's side on the ledge itself and flip the tripod over on its side. With the camera like this, I then open two of the tripods legs. With the legs out, I can lay them out on the floor and have that stabilize the camera on its side. To be on the cautious side, I like to keep my wrist strap attached to the camera just incase it falls or something, especially when really windy.
4) Standard Tripod
Every tripod is different so I’m really speaking from my experience, but when using my tripod in the city, I find it a bit troublesome sometimes as not only are sidewalks very narrow from time to time, but I'd rather not block people's way just to take a photo. That just doesn't sit well with me. To prevent that, I found a bit of a solution that works in most cases I found. With most sidewalks, there is some type of handrail or something similar. I like to use two legs of the tripod and lean them on the railing with the 3rd leg on the floor. With a tripod like this, I find it not only it is a bit easier to set up and put away the tripod, but I don't have to take up the whole sidewalk just because I want to set up my tripod. It makes me feel less bad, leading me to taking out my tripod a bit more often and being able to get more long exposures of the city I'm taking photos of with my tripod.
When going out, I'm pretty conscious of the gear I bring to make sure I can get the shots I want for that particular shoot and also to avoid bringing too much as that can get in the way of actually taking photos. I hope these tips helped give you some ideas so you can take some long exposure shots yourself in the city.