Although it was cold and wet last night, I grabbed my camera bag and tripod and set up on the Kay Gardner Bridge over Yonge Street to photograph these car light trails.
Basically, photographing light trails involves finding a spot where you’ll see the light trails created by cars, setting a long exposure on your camera and shooting at a time when cars will be going by to create the trail of light. Of course it’s a little more complicated than this – but the main principle behind it is longer exposures that will enable the cars that create the trails to move through your image.
For these images I also used a 6-stop neutral density filter which extends the exposure time even longer to increase the length of the trails in the photos. These images were exposed for approximately 2 minutes at ISO 64, f11, +1 exposure compensation, using a Nikon 24-70mm f2.8 Nikon lens set at 46mm.
Getting a good car light trail photo can be tricky and takes some patience to get the right timing. I try to get a balance between the white headlights and the red taillights , but since headlights are brighter than the taillights, you aim for an image that has more cars going than coming to create that balance.
Shooting outside a studio where you have little to no control over light and other elements is what makes landscape photography very challenging , and incredibly rewarding when through good technique and composition , and a little bit of luck, you get the photo.
