Keeping an Open Shutter - Motion Blur Photography

Since releasing Venice Visuals, my first NFT collection on Stacks, I received a lot of positive feedback about the images, much of which was about images that included some element of motion blur (13 of the 100 images in Venice Visuals have this trait in the metadata). Motion blur is a technique where the photographer slows down the shutter so that anything that moves while the shutter is open looks blurred. One can either hold the camera still so that anything that moves is blurred, or one can follow a moving object to blur everything except that object. It can take quite a lot of trial and error and experimenting with the right exposure, but the results can be quite stylized and unique. The image below, Venice Visuals - Surf and Turf was shot at 1/40 of a second and I matched the movement of my camera to the speed of the bicyclist.

It’s a technique that I’ve always been drawn to and as I considered the direction in which I wanted to take my future releases for Stacks I felt most excited about leaning into this style. Descanso Motion Blur I and Descanso Motion Blur II - Forest of Light are two more great examples of how using motion blur can completely transform something familiar (in this case a field of electric light tulips from the Enchanted Forest exhibit at Descanso Gardens), into something abstract and unrecognizable.

When I was invited to contribute an image for the collection Together with Gamma, participants were prompted to include something that pointed back to the theme of “people coming together through Bitcoin and Web3.” For the sunset session I set up my Canon EOS R + a 50mm 1.4 lens on a tripod on the beach pointed toward the Santa Monica mountains and opened the shutter for 30" to give myself enough time to wave around fiber-optic LED lights in various patterns. The best time of day for this is dawn or dusk when it's nearly dark so the lights shine bright while still allowing the color and definition in the sky and landscape to be visible.

The final image I chose (above) includes light trails from the LEDs surrounding two semi-silhouetted profiles facing each other. This is not a composite of multiple images and there was no photoshopping done, merely one 30" exposure with few color and lighting corrections done in Lightroom. This single image captures the idea that despite our varying degrees of anonymity, we often make significant connections to one another through our online personas.

During this session I also experimented using sparklers and although I did not chose any of these images to be included in Together with Gamma, I loved the results and continued to think about how to use sparklers in my next collection. Below are some of the other images from the session and you can find videos on my Instagram (@longstreet.etc).

After importing the images into Lightroom I was so excited and began imagining the various possibilities and what sorts of images the Bitcoin/Stacks community might appreciate. This week (the first week of July) I will be releasing the images for my next collection, Bitcoin on Venice Beach, and will write more about that photo shoot and the editing process in my next post.

You can see more behind the scenes footage and images on my socials, and in the Stacks Photography Guild discord. Bitcoin on Venice Beach will be released in conjunction with the other incredible Stacks photographers during Photography Week on Gamma.io.