Light Trails
Light trails take the slow-shutter idea into the dark. With a multi-second exposure at night, moving lights — like car headlights and taillights — paint continuous glowing ribbons across your frame as they travel.
Darkness is your friend here: it lets you keep the shutter open for several seconds without the rest of the scene blowing out. The camera needs rock-steady support — a tripod, or braced hard on something solid — and a remote or 2-second timer keeps you from shaking it when you press the button.
Find a spot with steady traffic — an overpass, a curving road, a bridge — and start your exposure as cars approach so their lights sweep through the frame.
Shutter Priority (S or Tv) at 5s–15s, ISO 100, after dark — the camera picks the aperture. Use a 2-second timer or remote, and brace the camera on a tripod, wall, or railing. Outdoors: begin as cars approach and adjust the shutter to lengthen or shorten the ribbons. Indoors: darken the room and sweep a flashlight through the frame during the exposure.
Your moving light forms a continuous bright ribbon — red taillights and white headlights on the road, or a flashlight trail across a dark room — while the stationary scene stays sharp and properly exposed. If it's just a blurry dot, the light needs to travel more across the frame or the exposure needs to be longer.
The assignment
Turn a moving light into a glowing streak with a long exposure — car headlights on a road, or right at home, a flashlight swept across a darkened room.
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