Emboldened by my semi-”success” of night shooting last week, I started experimenting with some longer exposure photos, or “bulb exposures”, as they are called by people who actually do this for a living.  And if Randy and Brad are reading this, yes, I was still working that night…I did it on my lunch break

Starlight Harvest and The Invisible Tractor

Starlight Harvest and The Invisible Tractor

I set up near a post in the vineyard for steadiness, and then opened the shutter while a tractor was approaching from behind, traveling down the avenue with an empty gondola.  The exposure time was 30 seconds!  The shutter closed and finally completed the “shot” once the tractor and gondola were in the center of the frame.  The white streak of light you see is a spotlight on the back of the tractor, and the short red streak down below is the taillight on the gondola. You may ask, why isn’t the tractor there now? As it turns out, the tractor and the gondola did not reflect enough light to “burn” an image into the digital sensors, since they were not bright enough and were not present for long enough in the frame to appear in the photo. Instead, we see the vineyard in the background, which was exposed in the frame for the 25 seconds previous to the arrival of the tractor. We have here, in essence, a photograph of “30 seconds in time”, instead of only a “moment” in time.

Taken at ISO 400, f/3.8, exposure 30 seconds, and focal length of 20mm.

Vineyard Illuminated

Vineyard Illuminated

Again, a “bulb exposure”. The light source is a machine parked on the headland of the vineyard. I took the shot laying down, holding the camera upwards to capture the vineyard canopy, the light, and the stars above. Not the most focused picture…I haven’t figured out how to focus in the pitch black quite yet.

Taken at 18mm focal length, f/3.5 and 30 seconds exposure.