Karin Nelson

Long exposure photography is hard on a marriage, if your spouse isn’t into photography as well. He drives you to a beautiful location, and you stroll hand in hand down the beach, until you spot a place where a picture wouldn’t be a bad idea. Now, under normal circumstances, a “regular” person grabs his or her point ‘n shoot and takes a picture. Ok, maybe two. Or even three. “Honey, smile!” Or they stand with their backs to the motive and smile in the camera and take a cute little self portrait together. Sure. 5 minutes, tops. Camera goes back into the bag and off you go.

Now, let’s play this again with two different people, one of whom is a “serious” photographer.

So, where were we? Oh yes, the stroll along the beach, until you get to a beautiful location where a picture wouldn’t be a bad idea. “Honey, I think I’d like to take a picture.” Out comes the tripod. Now to find a location for the tripod. Level it properly. Make sure there is a subject to take a picture of in the foreground. NO! NOT PEOPLE!! Are you nuts?? We don’t want no people in our beautiful landscape. Relocate the tripod. Relocate again. Ok, now focus. Now mount a polarizer. And now the ND filter. 10 stop. Oh yeah, those screw on filters take time. Now the long exposure. Let’s keep it short, say, 2 minutes? Fine. Set camera to Bulb, release the trigger and wait. “HONEY!! DON’T TOUCH THE TRIPOD! Why don’t you just wait over there. NOT THERE!! GET OUT OF MY FRAME!! Stay behind me, will ya?” In the meantime the 2 minutes are up. Picture is done. Looks ok. But better repeat it, you never know. And then lets change the location of the tripod again. You know, the area is just so beautiful.

45 minutes later it’s all in the bag, and you are lucky if your husband has driven off without you instead of drowning himself in the river.