Hampton Beach Sunrise – Long Exposure Edition

I snuck off to Hampton Beach this morning and took some sunrise pics. I took the tripod and the neutral density filter and shot a few long, or longish, exposures.

To me “long exposure” and “30 second exposure” are sort of synonymous in a weird way. When I set up I set the shutter speed to 30 seconds without giving it any thought.

The first few are from before the sun actually came up. It was light enough to read by, but the sun wasn’t over the horizon yet.

This one might be my favorite of the bunch.

Now it gets weird. You put the ND filter on so that you can take long exposures in the daylight. What if the daylight itself is what you’re trying to shoot? Well, if you leave the shutter open too long you get crap like this. (although I still like the rocks in the bottom left)

After seeing that image in my tiny little display I thought, I guess it’s time to shorten the exposure. I then began to experiment. Duck and cover.

13 seconds, without the sun, and apparently the Earth has begun to tilt out of control (sorry).

10 seconds, with the sun. A little better, but still a sloppy mess.

2 seconds. I kinda like this one.

1 second. Not as dramatic an effect, but still kinda nice.

I’ll post some of the non-long exposure pics shortly.