Slowing the world down - Daylight long exposure photography on Hive

During the late night summer months, I find that I take less photos because I prefer to shoot after dark. And waiting for the night to fall until very late leads to me shooting until the early hours with the resulting sleep deprived zombie the following day. I didn't think it was possible to get a hangover without alcohol!

So this summer, I resolved to try something different: daylight long exposure photography. This style means I can get my long exposure 'fix' shooting in the middle of the day and be home in time for my bed and the necessary beauty sleep!!

Being a photographer of many years, I have struggled with the concept of photography as 'art". But in making long exposures such as these, I've come to realise and be more comfortable with describing my work as 'fine art'. I've always found the phrase very pretentious and never regarded my images as worthy of that phrase.

In order to achieve the long exposures necessary for daylight long exposures, I bought a kit of ND filters ( 'Neutral Density' ). I started off using 3, 4 and 6 stop filters but found I preferred a 10 stop filter and an exposure time of around 2 minutes. The two minutes gave the images my preferred amount of motion in the skies but not too long as to make the skies disappear altogether.

Rather than waffle on about the gear I used, these are some examples of daylight long exposures I shot this summer:

Under Southwold Pier

For this shot, I arrived very early just after dawn on a very stormy morning. After a brief period of fake OCD trying to line this structure up, I found that two minutes worked best to blow out the sky and correctly expose for the pier.

One memory from this session was the two septuagenarian ladies who stripped off right in front of me and proceeded to jump in the icy cold North Sea for a swim. I had no idea the older ladies of Suffolk were so tough!

Minimalist Groynes

One of the benefits of long exposures is to slow the world down and make an image less complicated and isolate subjects which might get lost in the surroundings. Here I focus stacked 3 x 2 minute exposures to get everything in focus from front to back.

This is North Beach in Bridlington, East Yorkshire, the last place you would expect to see fine art.

Hunstanton Beach Sunset

It's not always cold when I go out with a camera. This is Hunstanton Beach at sunset over a two minute exposure. I found that I had to keep moving my position between each shot as the tide was rising at an alarming rate!

The Rusty Metaphor

On a walkabout with my camera on Happisburgh Beach in Norfolk and after a few hours shooting I had already packed up my gear. On my way back to the car trying to escape the rapidly incoming tide, I spotted this rusty piece of metal sticking out of the sea and knew I had to shoot it.

So all the gear came back out again and I waited for the sun to appear from behind the clouds to light up the rust. Luckily I made it back to the without having to swim!

It's also occurred to me that this image is like a rusty metaphor. Stuck up to my neck in it with everything pouring over me and looking a little worse for wear ;-)

Minimal

This was a little rushed as we were impatiently waiting for sunset somewhere down the coast. I didn't focus stack the image and this is one single 2 minute exposure.

Steetley Pier

Steetley Pier is a bucket list location for me. Everyone else has shot it before me but I never made the two hour drive to get here. I was happy with the results!

Post Apocalyptic Pier

The original of this image is in colour and just didn't cut it. A quick conversion to monochrome and this works much better.

The long exposure and the somewhat steam punk nature of the pier structure reminded me of a scene out of Mad Max or some other post apocalyptic world.

I would have preferred to shoot looking straight down the pier for the vanishing point perspective but inconveniently the concrete bases didn't line up to the satisfaction of my pseudo OCD. So here I settled for placing the vanishing point on the right hand third.

Cromer Pier

In order to get to Cromer, I have to drive for 2.5 hours each way. Some say I must be crazy to drive all that way for one image but I do also like the process of taking a photo as well as the result.

Concrete brutalism

Another location on a beach which wasn't being productive. As I walked back to my car to go home, I spotted this concrete jetty used for launching sail boats. I am designer by profession and this geometric composition caught my eye. Another two minute exposure isolated the concrete to make the geometry stand out.

Skegness' Post Apocayptic Pier and the Smell of Weed

I shot this under Skegness Pier. This seaside town on the Lincolnshire coast has a lurid reputation and you would NOT normally find me in such a place. At the same time as I was shooting this, the England soccer team were playing in a crucial match (I have no interest in football) and the game was being shown on a big screen in a bar on top of the pier. It seems the crowd loved to smoke weed and the pungent smell wafted under the pier leaving me to wonder what the heck I was doing there!

Another two minute exposure, the only one as I didn't hang around!

About me:
I usually specialise in shooting lightpainting images but occasionally dabble in urbex, landscape and artistic model photography. I'm always on the lookout for someone to collaborate with; the social side of photography is always good!

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