We kicked off our second day of the scavenger hunt by experimenting with Big Stoppers and multiple exposures

YOUR PHOTO CHALLENGE: GO SHOOT… A long exposure

After spying a few promising locations on the journey home after day one, we hit the road with confidence as day two dawned. The first card out of the hat required us to take a photo using a long exposure, and we knew where to find a field of round bales that would work a treat as the essential stationary interest in a long-exposure cloudscape. The only problem was that we didn’t have time to seek the farmer’s permission to enter the field, which meant having to shoot from the road, restricting our composition and framing options.

The bright conditions and low wind meant that the movement of the clouds wasn’t registering as an extensive blur, even with a Lee Big Stopper filter attached to the lens. To solve this we experimented with the multiple exposure feature on our D500, taking between three and five longexposure frames as the clouds moved across the scene, which we then automatically combined into one final multiple exposure. To ensure the camera didn’t move between each frame and to record the bales in the same position in each shot, we used a heavy-duty Gitzo tripod, with an even heavier Tamrac backpack suspended under the centre column to add ballast.

light and blur The base exposure of six seconds recorded the changing light pattern as well as the smearing of the clouds