I was thinking of the possibility to capture a traffic light with all the lights illuminated on it for a long time.

The image above is one of the first photos from my poor choice of location. Basically we need to find an appropriate location to place the camera on a tripod and do a very long exposure to capture the light from all the traffic lights as they turn on. As this traffic light was at a busy intersection, it was “Green” for most of the time. And I doubt the Orange light was on for much during my 55 second exposure.

The camera settings need to be fully manual as we need to control all the factors including Manual focus (as autofocus might mot find what object to lock on if using a wide focal length), Low ISO, Bulb mode and remote shutter, maximum aperture. A sturdy tripod is a must, and an ND filter is handy.

The final piece of my puzzle was the remote shutter release which is required to do exposures of larger than 30 seconds, and greatly reduces the camera shake if we have to manually.

After a while, I moved to another location to see if I could capture all the lights. And this time, I kind of got them from exposures of around a minute but ran into some glares as well as other bright sources. It was getting late and I didn’t have my dinner. Some sacrifices to make when following such challenges.

The light trails like these are very easy to capture, when comparing to all the efforts with the traffic lights. Here is to more opportunities and “time” for getting some long exposure shots done.