We are back with a new tutorial about Light Trails photography. It’s not a difficult to capture Light Trails, it’s easy you need to know about manual/pro mode that’s it. Let’s get started the tutorials.
What are Light Trails?
Light trails are a colorful and creative effect that photographers can capture by employing long-exposure shooting on their camera. The basic principle of light trail creation is that by manually dropping a camera’s shutter speed to a very low level, light is captured by the sensor over an artificially long period of time, with every passing vehicle having its lights tracked and recorded over the visible distance of the road. This causes the lights to appear as a streaked moving line across the image, rather than a fixed-point emanating from the cars’ headlights.
Let’s get started !!
Equipment’s You Need:
- Tripod/Stable Hands.
- Mobile Phone with Pro/Manual Mode.
Light Trails continue to be popular subject matter for many peoples and they can actually be a great training ground for those wanting to get their cameras out of manual mode and to experiment with shooting in low light at longer exposures.
You’ll also need a tripod (or some other way to making your phone completely still) as you’ll be shooting with long shutter speeds which will make shooting handheld pretty much impossible.
The Basic Principle: At the most general level photographing light trails involves finding a spot where you’ll see the light trails created by cars/bikes, securing your phone, setting a long exposure setting on your phone and shooting at a time when cars will be going by to create the trail of light. Of course, it’s a little more complicated than this – but the general factor behind it is longer exposures that will enable the car/bikes that create the trails to move through your image.
Experiment: While there are a lot of tips that could be shared on the topic of photographing light trails – the main thing I learned in my early days of attempting to create these types of images was to experiment extensively. The beauty of this photography is that you can do this with no extra cost to yourself and can get instant results.
Setting Up Your Shot: Photographing light trails is not difficult – it’s as simple as finding virtually any road with cars going down it once the sun goes down. But getting a shot that grabs attention means putting a little more thought into choosing your location, thinking about timing and framing your image. Here are a few tips on how to set your shot up:
Timing/Light – One might think that the middle of the night is the best time for light trail photography (and it can be) – however one very effective time to do it is just as the sun is going down (just before and after). If you shoot at this time, you’ll not only capture light from cars, but ambient light in the sky which can add atmosphere to your shots. You also might find that earlier in the evening you get a little more ‘action’ in your shot with more cars and even the movement of people through your shot.
Creative Perspectives – Some of the most effective light trail shots that I’ve taken and seen from others were taken from perspectives other than at the height of a normal person standing up. Get down low or find a place looking down on your scene that will create an unusual angle.
Location – The most obvious thing with location is that you’ll need it to be somewhere near a road – however there’s more to think about than that. Choose a location that adds interest to the shot in some way. This might be one where there are well lit buildings along the road, one where multiple roads merge together to create light trails in different directions, on the bend of a road so that the trails sweep through the image, near a roundabout so the trails create circular shapes, in the middle of dual carriageways so that you get traffic coming in two directions etc.
Framing – The normal ‘rules’ of composition apply in this type of photography. Images need some sort of point/s of interest, the rule of thirds can be applied effectively, draw the eyes into your image using lines smartly, foregrounds and backgrounds should add to and not distract from the image.
Settings: I’ve found that I usually shoot at shutter speeds between 2 and 16 seconds. The key is to start with something in the range above and to take a few test shots to see how the exposure works. You’ll quickly realize whether your shots are under or overexposed and whether the length of the exposure is long enough to let cars travel through the frame in the way that you want.
Choose a low ISO setting – This will give you images with as little noise as possible. It will be ISO100 which gives awesome pictures.
Manual Focus – In low light situations cameras can struggle to get focusing locked correctly. The last thing you want is for your phone to be in and out of focus just as you need to hit the shutter release. Switch to manual focus and make sure your focus is upon a part of your image that is visually strong.
Generally speaking, you’ll get the best results with long exposure photos if you use a DSLR or mirrorless camera. But by using the techniques outlined above you can get good night photos with a smartphone. Most smartphones offer a manual mode that allows you to control the shutter speed and ISO. You can’t change the aperture, but you don’t need to, as smartphone cameras all have a very large depth of field anyway. Make sure you switch off the flash and other software tricks like HDR mode.
