The long and short of it

James Paterson shoots better blur by shutter-blending to combine longer and shorter exposures in a single frame

- James Paterson

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 to the optimum shutter speed for the slower river.

By shooting separate frames for each while varying our shutter speed 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.

Depending on whether you want to shutter-blend waterfall photos or any long exposure scene, this technique can help you to achieve better blur every time you shoot.

Get set up for shutter blending 

SHOOT LONG EXPOSURES WHILE VARYING SHUTTER SPEEDS OVER A RANGE OF FRAMES

1 Use a tripod