THE LONG AND SHORT OF IT

James Paterson shows you how to capture better blur by using shutter-blending to combine longer and shorter exposures in a single frame

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A long exposure is a wonderful way to blur motion in your photography. Rivers, waterfalls, waves and clouds can look stunning when captured as streaks of silky blur.

But when it comes to setting up your camera for a long exposure, how slow do you go? Some parts of a scene may come out better with a really long exposure of several seconds or even minutes, while other areas may be better off with a slightly quicker speed of a second or less. It all depends on the speed of the movement in the scene, and how that translates to blur in your photograph. In our waterfall scene here, for example, the water is moving faster as it cascades down the waterfalls, but flowing slower in the main body of the river. As such, the optimum shutter speed for the fast-moving waterfalls differs from the optimum shutter speed for the slower river.

By shooting separate frames for each while varying our shutter speed. and then blending together afterwards, we can have the best of both speeds. Of course, it may not always be clear which shutter speed is best until later on, so in this project we'll show you how to get set up to shoot for a variety of shutter speeds, then blend the best blur from each into a single frame. Along the way we'll explore the fundamentals of long exposures, and explain Photoshop blending techniques.

Whether you want to capture a waterfall scene like this, or, for example. a scene containing both moving water and clouds, this technique can help you to achieve better blur every time.

HOW TO GET SET UP FOR SHUTTER BLENDING
Shoot long exposures while varying shutter speeds over a range of frames