One of my favorite things to shoot is a light trail on a dark road. The brilliant blur of a million headlights, the juxtaposition of stillness and movement—it’s a powerful image to capture.

Digital Photography School created a helpful tutorial on the subject.

Here’s an excerpt:

“At the most general level photographing light trails involves finding a spot where you’ll see the light trails created by cars, securing your digital camera, setting a long exposure setting on your camera and shooting at a time when cars will be going by to create the trail of light. Of course it’s a little more complicated than this—but the general factor behind it is longer exposures that will enable the car/s that create the trails to move through your image.”

And a few tips for setting up your shot:

Timing/Light- One very effective time to do it is just as the sun is going down. If you shoot at this time you’ll not only capture light from cars, but ambient light in the sky which can add atmosphere to your shots.

Location - Choose a location that adds interest to the shot in some way. This might be one where there are well lit buildings along the road, one where multiple roads merge together to create light trails in different directions, on the bend of a road so that the trails sweep through the image, near a roundabout so the trails create circular shapes, in the middle of dual carriageways (on a traffic island) so that you get traffic coming in two directions etc.

Framing - the normal ‘rules’ of composition apply in this type of photography. Images need some sort of point/s of interest, the rule of thirds can be applied effectively, draw the eyes into your image using lines smartly, foregounds and backgrounds should add to and not distract from the image.

Photo CC 2.0, Fishtail@Taipei