Random Photo Friday: First Bash at Long Exposures

Is it really a year ago already that I was blown away by the passion and enthusiasm of Vancouver’s wonderfully talented photographer, Marc Koegel, as he presented an inspiring 1-hour seminar on his specialty, ‘Long Exposure Photography’? The seminar was one of three that I signed up for during a weekend open-house at Vancouver Photo Workshops (VPW)* – a fantastic photography school just down the street from where we used to live, which Marc founded in 2004 and where he continues as a photographer, educator, writer and director (maintaining a fabulous blog on LE photography too). 

Without hesitation I signed up for the Long Exposure weekend workshop he was offering a few weeks later and once again he blew my mind – not only by his contagious passion for photography and his incredible (enviable) skill at fine art and long exposure artistry, but also because I had never even thought about this aspect of photography and yet the results can be truly stunning. It’s definitely an area of photography that I want to pursue, even though I’ve practised it hardly at all since taking the class last year. Why? Well, partly because the best results are when there is some cloud and/or water – and this past year in Vancouver has been a bit of an anomaly in that there were a crazy amount of either cloudless or else too cloudy days, in-between the usual rain. If the sky’s cloudless or completely overcast it’s harder to get the motion that elapses during the exposure time, so the effect isn’t quite as dramatic.

Anyhow, while I have yet to seriously get to grips with this new-found inspirational niche in photography, I’m very excited to try it again soon and (finally) make use of the new Neutral Density (ND9) filter Lorne gave me for my birthday last year. In the meantime, for today’s random photo(s) I thought I’d include a couple of the shots I was pleased with from the Crescent Beach outing we did as part of last year’s weekend workshop. Watch this space for more to come!

The above images were shot mostly with ND8 and an exposure time of between 4 to 8 mins.

* Prior to learning about Vancouver Photo Workshops, I did all of my photography courses at the now-defunct Focal Point Photography School in the Point Grey/UBC area. I have to say, even in my very limited experience at VPW, I am more impressed with them than I ever was with the majority of classes I took at Focal Point.