Earlier, I posted an entry about long exposure photography. That entry discussed an image with an exposure time of 104 seconds.

In another long exposure picture taken during that same outing, I extended the shutter speed to nearly 20 minutes!

Rialto Square TheaterRialto Square Theater (1926) at 102 N Chicago Street in Joliet, Illinois on March 8, 2016 I learned a few things while taking this picture:

• The long exposure introduces an almost surreal effect by smoothing everything out. During the exposure, the conditions alternated from overcast to direct sunlight. The variety of lighting within the same exposure introduces a very different look--even in the buildings.
• Of course, the clouds moving through the frame during the long exposure really smoothed out the sky.
• During this exposure, many cars and pedestrians passed through the frame. As long as they don't remain in the same spot for a long period of time, they won't make an impression on the sensor. In this image, a car parked on the curb for the last 5 minutes of the exposure. That car had a ghost like appearance. I did a relatively poor job of removing it in Photoshop.
• The exposure took a long time. If the exposure isn't accurate, 20 minutes is a long time to wait for a second attempt!
• Perhaps a 5 minute exposure would have accomplished a similar look. I will have to experiment more.

As a point of reference, here's the same scene from a few minutes earlier:

Rialto Square TheaterRialto Square Theater (1926) at 102 N Chicago Street in Joliet, Illinois on March 8, 2016 Again, it's not that one photograph is necessarily superior to the other. But, it's fascinating to me how much different the two pictures look simply from changing the shutter speed.