Making People Disappear

II plan to do this at some point but long exposures have been something on my list for a long time and they can give you a lot of different effects. I first heard about long exposures creating magic when I read one of my first photography books and there was a photographer that took a really long exposure and nodded their head and the resultant photo was them without a head. I was captivated by this, but I tried it and didn’t get good results. Needless to say that I am very old and so this was on a 35mm film camera (actually I can’t talk for the photographer in the book, they may have had a different film form).

I’ve not really thought too much about it other than taking the Cypriot Waterfall. I mean I did buy an ND filter to lengthen the exposure time, and I did have a cheap one which was really awful. So much so that each picture taken was being taken through a lattice gate. Despite this I have yet to create anything meaningful.

Anyway, the point of this post is harks back to the start, where you can make things disappear. I read a post (I don’t know where) that suggested you can take pictures of busy places and take such a long exposure that all the people disappear. I loved the idea and have yet to have chance to try it out myself. To be honest I don’t think it even needs to be a long exposure, but perhaps multiple photos combined. Obviously for both you will need to have a tripod and for the later a remote shutter, and I think the multiple exposure is easier nowadays. However either way should work. The nearest article I can find is this one. I suspect the thing is that you would be better not having a lot of sky in the shot as this sort of gives the overall impression of an overcast scene, unless you have a completely blue sky of course.

Needless to say, if I ever get a morning/afternoon to myself, then I’ll post my results here.