Most of the time we keep an eye on the shutter speed to make sure we don't get blurry photos. Occasionally, though, we're watching the shutter speed to make SURE we get blurry photos.
As I mentioned in the last post, I recently led a photo trip to Hawaii. We spent a lot of time near water, so one of the things we wanted to do was shoot blurry photos of moving water. If you start doing this, you'll find there's a big difference in look between shooting slow and shooting really slow.
First things first. If you want to do this right, you need to work from a tripod. To make an effective blurry water shot, you want the water to blur, not the entire scene. That means being locked down on a good, solid tripod.
Shutter speed comes next. For most people, shooting at 1/30 second or slower is considered slow, and if you shoot fast-moving water that way (faster water will show blur better), you will get blurry water. However, if you want a better look, you need to shoot slower. Try to get down to one-half second or slower. If you want the really classic "cottony" or foggy look, you need to go even longer, such as two seconds or beyond.
Long exposures like this usually require you to close your aperture (f/stop) as much as possible. If it's fairly bright, then you may need to find other ways to reduce the light as well. First, set the camera's ISO as low as it will go. Second, consider using some sort of filter to reduce the light even more. A polarizing filter is a good starting point, as it usually cuts the light one to two stops. For more than that, look at "neutral density" filters. They look like dark grey filters, and what they do is cut down the amount of light passing through without affecting the color. I have a three-stop, but they go much lower, as much as eight-stops. With some of these tools, you can get your exposure up to thirty seconds or longer. The last photo I have here, what looks like rocks and fog, is a four-second exposure of waves rolling through those rocks.
Remember that our goal in photography is to continue learning and experimenting, and finding new ways to keep our photos interesting. Working with intentionally slow shutter speeds is one way to do that.
