First Attempt at Light Trails

I’ve often wanted to but never had the opportunity – correction – never TOOK the opportunity –  to take some images of light trails.  I see them and I think to myself “These are really cool!”

Now it’s easy to make excuses when one has a job and a family as well as other commitments that he invariably makes.  Essentially, it came down to being too lazy to take the time to learn.

So, after getting my new D7500, I took some time later in the evening to try it out.  After I was out there I realized that I had forgotten my remote.  The only realistic way to do the shots now was to actually hit the shutter button and hope for the best.  There is more detail of the surrounding artifacts than I had wanted.  I later found that using recommended shutter speed and apertures was allowing more light than desired.  Areas with overhead highway lights are probably not the best locations for such shots.

First attempt overlooking highway.
Sigma 18-250mm @105mm F5.6 10 seconds

I then went to street level only about 3 minutes from home to try it out.  Remember, the whole point of this outing was to learn and mistakes are bound to happen.  I found that the regular trails were unimpressive from whatever vantage point I had but had a couple of surprise and welcome opportunities for something a little different:

 

 

I then turned around for oncoming and got this:

Oncoming Brinks truck after just having turned onto the road.
Sigma 18-250mm @18mm F6.3 1 second

I admit that there were a lot of ‘wasted’ shots but I think that I have learned from all of them.  I like the effect of the light trails on larger slower moving vehicles passing right beside me and I think I will try to do it some more very soon while refining the image taking process.

All in all, it was an enjoyable late evening where I had fun and learned too.