Bi-Weekly Photo: Experimenting With Long Exposure

One of the things I wanted to try when I bought the camera was long exposure shots, but I didn't try it until last December. I suppose I was too lazy to get out after dark to take some pictures alone. Fortunately, Pia saw a short clip about light painting on TV and wanted to do it herself, and since here in Munich "after dark" means at 4:30 PM during the winter, it was more like an afternoon walk.

In case you don't know what light painting is: if you have a scene with very little light or simulate that using a filter, you can capture that scene nontheless with a long exposure shot, where the shutter remains open for a long time period, "gathering" more light. If you take a strong light source and move it around the scene, that light source is "burned" into the image at every point it passes through, leaving a trail. This can be used to "draw" some interesting forms on your image.

We went to the park looking for a spot without too much artificial lighting and found this:

This was a rather quick shot (81s according to the Metadata), which is why the startrails are so short. It turned out to be one of the best shots, however. I still have a lot to learn about photography...

Here's one light-painted by Pia. I didn't manage to draw anything good...

PS: Yes, the white, red and purple spots on the image are hot pixels on my camera's sensor... It was the first time I used the sensor for long periods of time. I suppose it got a little hotter than usually, revealing the otherwise less obvious hot pixels.

Bi-Weekly Photo: Sunset in Segovia

This is one of my favorite pictures. I snapped it in the summer while taking a walk around Segovia (Spain), and I love it on my desktop's background.

PS: I won't have much time to write during the next few weeks. Exams are coming up...