Why Long Exposure Photography is so Appealing

Long exposures enable us to see otherwise impossible-to-see worlds with our own eyes. Thanks to long exposures, we can capture movement in a fixed image. Our eyes are capable of recording moments as stills in our brain, but since we cannot see movement as a fixed image, long-exposure photography triggers our imagination, and that’s perhaps the main reason why such images are so appealing to us.

What is Long Exposure?

Stationary elements and slow-moving objects can be captured using slow shutter speeds. Everything that is intended to capture a scene under this criteria is called a “long-exposure photograph”. Long exposures are easier to achieve in low light situations than in bright ones. This is because when a scene is bright, our camera has to do some math around the exposure, and we may also need filters to block all that light. Bright scenes are likely to jeopardize a long-exposure scene by giving us overexposed images.

Long exposure happens because of decisions a photographer makes. The decision results in less light passing through the lens and hitting a sensitive medium for a “long time”. Even though we are now capable of freezing time with extreme sharpness and precision with a camera, long-exposure photography and the sense of time it imparts is still much desired by many photographers, regardless of their…