What's a Long Exposure?

I confess… I love to make long exposures. It’s not something I do a lot, but I love the effect. The dreamy look of this photo is achieved by taking a long exposure. A long exposure is when you leave the shutter of your camera open for a longer period of time than the normal fraction of a second. In order to capture this image, I put my camera on a tripod and left the shutter open for nearly 30 seconds. This allowed the water to blur each time the ocean waves rushed towards the beach.

This sunrise photo was taken in Stone Harbor, NJ. It was taken before the sun rose—it was still quite dark and in order for the image to be seen, by the sensor, the shutter needed to remain open longer than it would have had the sun been up.

Had the sun been up, I would have used an ND filter to make the shutter stay open. An ND filter reduces the light hitting the shutter. It is similar to sunglasses for your eyes. It shades the front of the lens requiring the shutter to stay open.
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I like this picture because the sky is still in focus despite the long shutter. A lot of the time, the clouds would have blurred too (given that clouds move in the sky), but the sky was very still this day. As I mentioned above, I like the dreamy quality to the bottom half of the picture. It looks foggy around the rocks. I also like the colors. What do you think of this image? Do you like the long exposure—or would you have preferred to see the waves crashing? That would have been a completely different picture. What are your thoughts? 

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