I Spent 6 Months Taking Long Exposure Pictures Of Trams To Make Them Look As If They Came From Another World (26 Pics)

Art college training taught me the value of putting time and effort into producing the best results and helped me visualise the type of images I wanted to produce in advance. It also taught me the value of judging my work critically, if necessary returning to see if a capture could be improved upon. If something is important to you, try to be as perfectionist as possible and set yourself a high standard. A project like this is also a good learning experience: you only really learn about how to improve doing this type of photography by attempting it.

I only went out when there was a completely clear night sky; this meant there was less light pollution produced by low clouds and that I was more likely to achieve a pure black sky rather than a murky grey one. For some shots taken on roads in the city centre I would go out very early in the morning so as to avoid having other traffic included in the shot. The biggest challenge on some shots was working out how close I could position the camera in relation to the tram tracks before a tram’s slipstream caused the camera to shake, or the camera became damaged by being struck by the tram. (Luckily my camera stayed intact.)

My equipment was a Nikon D90 fitted with a Sigma 18-35 f1.8 lens mounted on a tripod. Exposure times were controlled by a shutter release cable. The lens aperture was at ƒ/16.0, exposure compensation at its darkest setting and ISO at 200. White balance was set in Kelvin. Some tips I can pass on are: Make all the changes to your camera’s settings at home before you leave the house; don’t try and change them in the dark and cold on location. Carry a torch if your tripod has a spirit level and start taking shots as soon as you’re set up to help you achieve optimum framing and shutter speed (measured in seconds). I shoot in RAW and did post in Photoshop Elements, mainly adjusting Levels.

One unexpected discovery I made was that passersby, once they saw a DSLR camera, would occasionally approach and ask for their photo to be taken. As my DSLR was set up for long exposures I carried a small compact camera in a pocket, just in case I was asked to take a snap of strangers. Oddly, this satisfied them; no one ever asked to see their picture!