We ran across this really great smattering of images made with a slow shutter release.

In addition to these first, second, and third place winners, there are a ton of honorable

mentions. Hurry and go check them out….

By Mark Wilson

Honesty: I never in my wildest dreams expected your slow-shutter

photography to be this crazy-awesome. But you turned in some

humbling shots for this week’s Shooting Challenge.

First Place

“Smoke Signal was taken with an Olympus sp350 set to night scene. This was taken

with a colour-changing LED rave light about 15cm long by 1cm wide that I wrapped

with electrical tape to create a candy-cane stripe. I placed the light on my record

turn table at a slow RPM and swiped the camera vertically to create the spinning stripe”

- Brad Bogle

Second Place

“No Photoshop! To take this photo, I set up some white paper for a background in a

dark room. I laid strawberries on a table and separately stood up a banana with some

cardboard and tape. With the lights on, I set up a quick-release tripod properly

framing the banana (this makes it much easier later). Now the lights are off.

So now I set my camera to bulb and used my built-in pop-up flash to shoot straight

down on the strawberries, filling the frame. Keeping my finger on the shutter button,

I put my camera on the tripod and then hit the pilot button on an external flash. The

flash hits the white background behind the banana, silhouetting it briefly. Effectively,

this washes out all of the original photo of the strawberries except for where the

silhouette is, thereby superimposing the first image onto the second. And you get

a cool glossy product-shot-reflection-look that results from the shadow drop-off of

the external flash (although if you look closely, you’ll notice the “reflection” is actually

just other strawberries from the initial shot). And now you can have a

strawberry-banana! Canon 20D 17-55 IS lens @ f/22 ISO 200 13s (multiple focal length)”

- Jason Yore

Third Place

Nikon D5000; Nikkor 18-200mm VR; Exposure: 36.5 seconds; Aperture : f/5.0;

Focal Length: 38mm; ISO: 400; WB: Daylight. I had a friend spin some burning steel

wool in an eggbeater attached to a lanyard at the top of the overpass. What you’re

seeing are the resulting spark trails.

- Dan DeChiaro

Advertisement