The Landscape Photography Book

Take a Second Shot in Aperture Priority Mode for Sharp Detail

This is a trick I learned from my dear friend, and long exposure expert, Mimo Meidany: after you’ve taken your long exposure image, take the ND filter off your camera, switch to aperture priority mode, and take a regular photo (not a long exposure). This second image is there in case you need to add sharp detail back into your photo later in Photoshop (Lightroom can’t do this trick). Sometimes, with a long exposure, the water will look super-smooth, or the sky will look wonderfully streaky, but other parts of the image might be a tiny bit blurry. Any little bit of movement that happens ...