Location Photography techniques (Long Exposures)

I recently visited London to visit a photography trade show to keep me up to date with the latest tech and gadgets. After the visit to the show I incorporated a little night photography in and around London which has always been a passion of mine

Shown here are various images taken during the evening along with some of the techniques that I used to manipulate them. They were all taken without flash and using only existing available light. I used my existing skills and experience of taking this kind of photography to illuminate my images

Shown above is a photograph of a Ghostly apparition of a past London resident from medieval times draped in a dark cloak roaming the tunnels beneath the river Thames or so it seems

The shot was actually a shot of a classmate waking down a tunnel. Using Photoshop for image manipulation I transformed the image shown below into the ghostly image above. The Image contained the tunnel and a class colleague which was taken as a long exposure

I pre visualised the shot and wanted a ghostly apparition in the shot so I asked a class colleague who was dressed all in black to walk down the tunnel while I exposed exposed the shot for about 15 secs at F11. This gave me the blurred motion effect of the character but wasn't to bright to wash out the highlights

Next I added some motion blur to the tunnel using the motion blur tool in Photoshop, I used  dodge, burn and smudge tools to lighten and darken various areas and to elongate the dark figure of my class mate in the centre

This was another shot at the side of the Thames taken again with a long exposure of 10 seconds at F11. I used a wide Canon angled 17-55 Lens to record the shot which is essential to get the maximum amount of light entering into the lens when performing night photography 

This shot demonstrates all of the various elements of a photograph that I include or consider before the shutter is pressed. I have to balance all of these features before a reasonable photograph can be achieved


These are:


Composition
Lighting
Design
Shape and form
Colour
Pattern
Depth of Field
Focus
ISO
Aperture

Shown below here is the metadata taken for the above shot taken with my 7D Canon camera. I used the software "Bridge" to capture the screen grab

The shots below were all taken using long exposures with my camera mounted on a tripod. I use a radio remote trigger shutter release to fire the exposure. This enables me to stand up to 50 metres away from my camera when the shot is taken


I used a 17mm wide angled lens for the shots which caused converging verticals of the taller buildings. To rectify this problem I used the "perspective" tool in photoshop  which allowed me to straighten the taller building which reduced the leaning effect

The tall building shown above shows the development of the "shard" London's newest building which is nearly at it's completion stage. The Shot above shows the taller buildings which have been straightened after applying image manipulation in Photoshop

The shot above shows how image manipulation was applied to remove the converging verticals

Shown above is the technique and tools I used in Photoshop to eradicate this phenomenon

The image above shows the light trail of an incoming aircraft landing at London City airport. My shutter was left open for about 17 Seconds at F8 on the bulb setting which recorded the headlights of the plane coming in to land