Honesty: I never, in my wildest dreams, expected your slow shutter photography to be this crazy-awesome. But 74 of you turned in some humbling shots for this week's Shooting Challenge.


First Place




"Smoke Signal was taken with an Olympus sp350 set to night scene. This was taken with a color changing led rave light about six inches long by 1/2 inch wide that I wrapped with electrical tape to create a candy cane stripe. I placed the light on my record turn table at a slow RPM and swiped the camera vertically to create the spinning stripe"

- Brad Bogle

Second Place



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"No photoshop! To take this photo, I set up some white paper for a background in a dark room. I laid strawberries on a table and separately stood up a banana with some cardboard and tape. With the lights on, I set up a quick-release tripod properly framing the banana (this makes it much easier later). Now the lights are off. So now I set my camera to bulb and used my built-in pop up flash to shoot straight down on the strawberries, filling the frame. Keeping my finger on the shutter button, I put my camera on the tripod and then hit the pilot button on an external flash. The flash hits the white background behind the banana, silhouetting it briefly. Effectively, this washes out all of the original photo of the strawberries except for where the silhouette is, thereby superimposing the first image into the second. And you get a cool glossy product-shot-reflection-look that results from the shadow drop off of the external-flash (although if you look closely, you'll notice the "reflection" is actually just other strawberries from the initial shot) And now you can have a strawberry-banana! Canon 20D 17-55 IS lens @ f/22 ISO 200 13s (multiple focal length)"

- Jason Yore

Third Place




Nikon D5000; Nikkor 18-200mm VR; Exposure: 36.5 seconds; Aperture : f/5.0; Focal Length: 38mm; ISO: 400; WB: Daylight. I had a friend spin some burning steel wool in an eggbeater attached to a lanyard at the top of the overpass. What you're seeing are the resulting spark trails. More here. [Ed note: the umbrella shots are even more impressive]

- Dan DeChiaro

These placements are almost unfair with so many good shots being in the mix. I wish that I could honorable mention you all. Check the gallery. It's well-worth a waste of 10 minutes.



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