Accomplished landscape photographers often use slow shutter speeds to capture dramatic images with a sense of motion. Unfortunately, some less-experienced shooters mistakenly consider this technique beyond the scope of their skills and equipment.

As you’ll see in the tutorial below from Park Cameras, a leading retailer in the UK, nothing could be further from the truth. In barely eight minutes you learn everything you need to know to get started today.

Gareth Evans is a good photographer and an ebullient instructor who says, “Long exposure is a great way to expand your landscape photography and add a creative flair to your photos.” He covers everything from what you’re going to need, necessary camera settings, and important techniques, to the best type of scenes for this task.

Evans explains long-exposure photography like this: “We’re going to let the shutter stay open for much longer than we normally would for taking a photo.” By that he means shutter speeds longer than a second, and typically much more. He notes that this style of shooting works great with all types of outdoor subjects and weather conditions throughout the year.

By following this approach two things happen: “a lot of light hits the sensor, and this smooths out any kind of motion.” With this in mind it’s obvious that the camera must be mounted atop a sturdy tripod to avoid camera shake. In fact, Evans recommends setting the camera’s self-timer to two seconds, to give it time to setting down after depressing the shutter button.

Evans explains a variety of straightforward techniques for getting the job done whenever there’s some form of movement within the frame. This can be anything from flowing water or clouds blowing across the sky, to people walking down the street or cars driving by.

This technique is easy to accomplish by following Evans tips, and you wont need any special gear. After a bit of practice you’ll be confident enough to use this method often.

There’s much more to see on the Park Cameras YouTube channel, so head over there after watching this video and see what they have to offer.

And if you want to expand your skills further, don’t miss the tutorial we posted explaining how to use “negative space” to shoot photos with impact.

We’ve posted numerous tutorials in the past explaining why so many accomplished photographers prefer to shoot in Raw, or set their cameras to capture both a Raw file and a JPEG every time they press the shutter button.

Today’s episode from German landscape pro Christian Mohrle provides a unique twist on this topic that illustrates the freedom of editing in Raw. It will save you a lot of time by using just one file—instead of multiple images and merging them for a perfect exposure.

Mohrle’s original intent was to take the focus-staking approach, so he captured three shots of his scene; one underexposed, another with the exposure recommended by the camera, and a third that’s too bright But as he began working on his first shot, which was really dark, he realized he could achieve a well-balanced image with that one photo.

There’s a link to download Mohrle’s image in the description beneath the video, so you can follow along as he demonstrates the rehabilitation process. His goal is to turn the underexposed photo into a dramatic and vibrant sunrise shot, and you may be amazed at what he accomplishes by viewing the before/after photos.

Mohrle begins by making a few global adjustments in Lightroom’s basic panel to the overall shot, to make it as good as possible for what follows. He starts by changing the profile to Adobe Standard, which slightly opens the shadows. He then cranks up exposure in a way that doesn’t add objectionable noise. There are few other quick enhancements to create the moody look Mohrle desires.

Next Mohrle turns to Lightroom’s masking panel for selective enhancements to different portions of the scene.  His first step involves a small radial gradient for further exposure adjustment to the sky, and an eye-catching glow just above the horizon.

Now the image is looking pretty good, and you’ll see how Mohrle makes it really pop with some simple color grading and sharpening. All that’s left to complete the spectacular transformation is a bit of cleanup in Photoshop.

There are more great editing tips and tricks like this on Mohrle’s popular YouTube channel, so be sure to pay a visit.

And for those who insist on shooting JPEG photos, take a look at the recent tutorial we posted explaining how to edit them like a pro.

Some of the most stunning photography is made of cement and wood! Okay, okay, it’s actually architectural photography and not really cement and wood. However, we wanted to bring some attention to those creating art from the art of architecture. It’s amazing how many angles, moods and emotions can be generated just from the rising or falling of the sun against stark white angled walls or the elegance evoked from a symmetrical Wes Anderson style 1940’s hotel structure. Shutterbug and GuruShots decided to challenge you to capture the quiet, still walls of the architecture world with a new photo challenge called “Inspiring Architecture”.

The biggest challenge in architectural photography is that there are only so many poses to your subject, so you need to get creative with how you can interpret and display an inanimate object which stands so strong on its own. You may notice many shots of the Chrysler Building may look similar, it takes a really talented photographer to find that never seen before angle or feeling of a powerful structure such as that.

We’re happy to say that many of you stepped up to the challenge and took on the task with full force. No use in kicking a brick but when it comes down to winning a contest it’s just a question of nailing it—with a hammer. After all the submissions came in we really put the images through the wringer with a rigorous voting process. In the end three winners were selected in the categories: Top Photographer, Top Photo and Guru’s Top Pick Categories.

We’ve included those winning images below along with seven runners-up. At the bottom of this post is a slideshow gallery with the rest of the runners up in the Inspiring Architecture challenge.

Thanks to all the amazing photographers who entered the contest and be sure to visit GuruShots to see the next photo challenge.

Winning Images

Runners Up