If you’ve looked at arty pictures of waterfalls or rivers then you’ll no doubt have seen those creative long-exposure shots where the water is intentionally blurred but the surroundings — the rocks, trees etc — remain pin-sharp. It’s a great technique to give the impression of motion in a still image and it used to be something you’d need a DSLR with filters and tripods to take. But a neat feature built right into the iPhone’s camera lets you take shots that look just as good. You don’t need the iPhone 13 Pro or 2022 iPhone SE to take advantage of this feature. It works on any iPhone launched after the iPhone 6.
Read more:Â Phone Photography 101: Take Amazing Photos With Any Phone
The iPhone uses Live Photos, a feature that turns a still image into a short animation by recording a few seconds of video when you fire the shutter. By analyzing which objects are moving, the iPhone captures the movement and blurs it. It’s also able to recognize what isn’t moving (a rock or a wall, for example) and attempts to keep those objects sharp and in focus. This lets you capture long-exposure images in even bright midday sun without using a tripod or filter. Take that, DSLRs.Â
Here’s how you can do it.
Know what makes a good long-exposure shot
Not everything works as a long-exposure image. A close-up of a flower blowing in the breeze will just become a blurry mess, while a picture of a static car will remain, well, static.Â
What you need is a scene where there are both static and moving elements. Waterfalls are common subjects as the rushing water will be blurred while the rocks all around will remain solid. Any body of water, really, would be a good subject to experiment with.Â
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