Hi there!
Mutual passing
It is May 22, 2026, and I am inserting this new image to show you I am still at work, and that there is a new angle on these motion blurred images. The other train or car photos here involve one stationary object (me with my tripod) and one moving (the vehicle). Here you have shutter speed that is not fast enough for the job, if the job is creating a sharp image. Instead, while someone else drove at highway speed northbound on I-17, I with my camera captured the truck with red cab. The effect is double the intentional camera blur because the speed with which the truck and our car approached each other was about 140mph!
Tracks and Traffic
Before I get started with LONG EXPOSURE in relation to trains, WHY focus this attention on trains?
Why do I use this technique, long exposure, for trains?
In addition to just wanting an artfully blurred shot, trains attract us, and specifically viewers of my photographs, because
a) The most important may be this: Trains travel at high speed but predictably (they stay on the tracks!)
b) When we see trains we are seeing history: the history of the industrial revolution, of cultural figures like Superman (“more powerful than a locomotive”!)
c) They are massive— the blur we can create captures their movement without diminishing their size and power.
This all adds up to this: Trains are—
powerful enough to compel interest,
predictable enough to use a tripod,
way bigger than tiny bird subjects,
and extremely moving—-
moving at high speed,
and moving our emotions.
And HOW does long exposure photography work for trains, traffic, and beyond?
RIght, but…
that is also a problem: Especially in daylight, if all that you touch is the shutter speed, your image will be washed out, way over exposed! What is easy is for “long exposure to become “overexposure.”
For some years now, Olympus and OM System cameras have been developing "computational photography tools. They developed a feature they call Live Composite. Like all photographic compositing it entails merging multiple images into a single image. Live composite does this in camera, "live" rather than in post-production.
Osprey overexposed
Live Composite is Olympus/ OM System's open secret. It is how Olympus cameras can leave the shutter open for a long time, a long exposure, without any washing out. Only the change is recorded. Fireworks? No problem! Lightning? No problem! Just the changes in light "count" in Live Composite mode. So the osprey photo, not shot in Live Composite, is washed out because the shutter was open too long.
Day train hurdeling past the station
The overexposed osprey is like a confession— yep, I that awful picture. The one right above, however— "Outrunning time"— is one I am proud of. The title refers to the train appearing to become invisible or transparent as it seems to do in relation to the very front of the image. See through background, right?
Southern California freeway traffic after sunset
The traffic lights photo above lives in the Composites and Digital Art gallery. To go directly to the image, click here.
With full moon just rising I set my camera on a tripod, choosing the Live Composite setting on my OM System camera, and took this shot, "Cloudy Moonrise Train.) It captures the fusion of beauty, light, and power, of nature (clouds and moonlight) and the "human made" (click there to see the gallery by that name in WilcePhotos, and Clouds and Mist, the gallery where the moonlight train photograph lives.)
Here is one more example above — Cars on a Los Angeles freeway at sunset. (Find it in my "Composites and Digital Art" gallery.)
The two photos above capture a train, and a single car rushing at me at high speed. Even in post-producton, I intentionally kept the "blown out" lights as they were and emphasized the contrast between that and their background.
By the way, you can intentionally blur a moving object by decreasing not only shutter speed but also the ISO and f-stop.
Foreshadowing Things To Come
p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.0px 'Helvetica Neue'} When I switched to Olympus gear in 2021, I quickly learned what I could do to achieve intentional camera blur. Now I have introduced you to two of the subjects I latched on to—birds in flight, and trains. In coming weeks you will see the abstract images I have created with Live Composite focused on blowing leaves. Fasten your seat belt for Lightning and Fireworks too!
Stay tuned for more episodes of WilcePhotos reflecting on Long Exposure! You can tune in NOW to my Photography Techniques page!
Thank you for your kind visit!