Shutter Speed Applied 2

Okay, I have to say that this project was hard. I was originally assigned to go out on a street and photograph moving lights at night. But I was having a hard time finding a busy road to photograph... in fact, I was having a hard time finding any moving lights to photograph. *sigh* 

It turned into a project that included a stationary candle and a moving camera.

Heh.

Yeah.

Think you have eye problems? Fear not, O friend. 

For all of these photos, the shutter speed was set at 15 seconds. 

That means the shutter was open for 15 seconds. You can get ALOT of light into a camera when you leave the shutter open for 15 seconds. That makes it pretty much essential to shoot in a dark place when you have the shutter open that long.

The above photo was taken by waving the camera wildly around. All the streaks of light are from the candle...

Here I just moved the camera up and down to make kind of a stripey pattern.

You can actually see the candle in the bottom left-hand corner. (Along with my beautiful watermark :D Not that any of you nice people would want to steal MY photos!)

This one.

Hm.

I really don't remember what I was doing here. 

Looks cool anyways.

And for the grand finale, a rather lopsided heart.

Yep, that blob is supposed to be a heart. 

So for now, the lessons to be learned are:

1. You can make cool patterns with a candle (or flashlight even) if you leave your shutter open a long time.
2. But, you must be in a dark room when you do that, because if you are shooting in a well-lit place, your photo will turn out a big, white, over-exposed blur. Try it sometime.
3. After seeing my photos, you know you really can't do too much worse than me on this. Do try it sometime. 
4. It isn't quite pointless either. 

Note: If you are using on a point&shoot, you can turn your camera on "starry night" mode, under "scene." I think most cameras have that... it might be called something a bit different. 

If you have a nicer-than-point&shoot-camera, well..........LUCKY! You can shoot on shutter priority (where you can set the speed of the shutter to whatever you want.) Usually on a nicer camera you could find some kind of mode for shooting starry skies that would have long shutter speeds. 

Have fun. And if you are using a candle, try not to burn your poor house down. 

;)