Long exposure is an ideal technique for visualizing trajectories, gestures and other movements. Technically, we can accomplish long exposures through techniques such as:
- An actual long exposure, i.e. controlling shutter timing on a DSLR
- Custom software and other scripts which blend adjacent frames
- iPhone apps, etc.
Many terrific examples of long-exposure photography can be found in Nicholas Felton's new book, PhotoViz, and are discussed in this terrific lecture at Webstock '15. Felton speaks about how "the intersection of photography and data visualization is a place where optical techniques reveal complex phenomena and data viz starts to resemble a photographic process."
- Solargraphy is a technique in which a fixed pinhole camera is used to expose photographic paper for an extremely long amount of time (sometimes half a year). It is most often used to show the path taken by the Sun across the sky. "The image below was recorded with a pinhole camera made from a drink can lined with a piece of photographic paper. The simple camera continuously records the Sun's path each day as a glowing trail burned into the photosensitive paper. Dark gaps in the daily arcs are caused by cloud cover, whereas continuous bright tracks record glorious spells of sunny weather."
- David Rokeby, Plot Against Time (Pedestrians, Fireflies, Birds, etc.)
- Dennis Hlynsky, Starlings in Flight
- Dennis Hlynsky: Ground Cloud, Long Exposure Photographs of Birds
- Pedestrians in Plot Against Time by David Rokeby:
- Olivier Gondry (dir.) for Tiga, You Gonna Want Me: long exposure bullet time (especially at 1'00").
