A Red Boat (long exposure simulation)

A Red Boat
A Red Boat

See this photo at EyeEm.

A Red Boat by Mike Jackobo

A red boat is anchored on the glass-like sea. A photo was taken on a cloudy day at Kavouri, near Athens. When I made this photo I wanted to try the ‘Smooth Reflection’ camera app from Sony. It’s a small app which simulates the effect of long exposure by shooting and combining multiple images. It is useful because it saves a lot on post-processing time.

I was trying to find a good subject but I wasn’t really satisfied with what I came across. That was until I came to a small pier of sorts, where I was able to test not only the app but also the combination of frozen movement with long exposure. The first subject were a couple walking on the pier (link to Instagram). After stopping to rest for a while, I tried the same thing on this red boat. The difficult part was the reflection of the boat and the mast on the sea, in the long exposure version. The movement of the boat by the wind and the currents meant that the reflection was a big smudge. To overcome this problem, I had to be creative during the process of combining the images in order to create a natural reflection.

Although not perfect, I think that the result is good enough to present it on the Photoblog. By the way, the man on the back didn’t actually move during all this time!

A Word about the Sony Camera Apps and Smooth Reflection

A few years ago, Sony introduced the concept of small application that enhance the functionality of their mirrorless cameras. Some of them really allow the user to perform more things with the camera, while others just perform tasks that any photo editing application can do. They can save on post-processing time though and that makes them nice additions. One of these apps is ‘Smooth Reflection’.

The traditional way of making long exposure photos is by using ND (grey) filters. With this method, there is a lot of guesswork regarding the proper exposure time; cheaper ones can also create colour casts in the final image. I prefer to make the long exposure effect by combining multiple images because it allows me to have total control over the result. This level of control also allows me to combine frozen movement with long exposure.  The downside is the fact that they require more time to make them -both the shooting process and post-processing. As mentioned, the ‘Smooth Reflection’ app saves a lot on post-processing time.

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