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If you’re new to photography then traffic trails can be one of the most captivating of camera tricks. Even those of us who have been shooting for years may still marvel at the vivid trails of light that occur when vehicle lights are captured with a long exposure. The usual approach is to wait for night so that the light levels are low enough to stretch the shutter speed out to several seconds. Of course, this often means the surroundings come out very dark. But what if – like our scene of Cheddar Gorge in Somerset here – we want to capture the majestic scenery along with trails of light?
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One solution is to shoot for a time blend – that is, to blend frames taken at different times of the evening. We begin by capturing the scene as the sun is setting. Here this meant we could record the sunlight glancing off the steep cliffs and the vibrant colours of the setting sun.
But at this time of day the light simply isn’t low enough to capture traffic trails. So next we wait for a while, leaving the camera in place on a tripod. After half an hour or so, we can shoot long exposures and capture the wonderful trails of light, as well as any glittering lights like the village of Cheddar in the distance here.
Piecing together our frames is a simple process in Photoshop or Affinity Photo, and calls upon key photo-editing skills with layers and masks.
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