Do your long exposure photos not always look the way you want them to? You could be making some basic mistakes and not be aware of it.

Whether you’re photographing landscapes, street scenes or seascapes, shooting at night is one way to create eye-catching images with sparkling lights, interesting skies, and dramatic light trails of moving subjects. In the tutorial below you’ll learn a quick-and-simple editing hack that makes nighttime images even more compelling.

OK, be honest here: Your camera has an AE-L/AF-L button, right? Do you understand how it works? Are you using it regularly? If you’re like many photographers, your answer to the first question is, “sure,” to the second question, “I think so,” and to the third question, “not really.”