Taking photos without a flash using a long exposure setting is a way to make surreal photography.
Surreal photographs are imaginative, eye-catching images that make reality appear surreal. The best examples of surreal photos are often of nature and events like fireworks. However, there are many types and forms of surreal imaging. While these photos are often nuanced, sophisticated and magical, it is not the expensive cameras or photo editing software that gives surreal photographs their charms, but a series of techniques mastered by photographers. Any photographer with use of any SLR camera can learn a few techniques to make surreal photos.
Instructions
1. Photograph during "magic hour," which are the hours around sunrise and sunset, without the flash. During these times of day the angle of the sun hitting the earth glazes everything in warm, attractive colors. Often, photos taken at this time of day appear surreal simply because of the whimsy that natural light creates.
2. Use perspective in framing. Focus on one thing, and don't leave out what is in the background, but use it to give the photo a surreal quality. A close-up of a bottle dripping one drop of water, frozen in perfect form just before it drops from the lid, with a person looking up at the sky, and thus the drop, situated in the distance behind, but because of the framing of the photo framing appears to be directly beneath the drop, is an example of the way that perspective is useful in making surreal photos.
3. Manipulate camera angle and orientation with ladders or positioning to generate a sense of surreality in photos. For instance, a photo of a person doing a handstand in the sky, with her feet barely touching beach sand, can be created without digitally retreating the photo. While you stand on a six-foot ladder, she reaches her arms into the sky into a perfectly flat plane and stands on her tip-toes and looks up at you, and every so slightly jumps when you take the photo. This technique allows her hair to move, giving the sense of reverse gravity.
4. Practice long exposure photography. This requires a shutter speed of between 1/2 to several minutes and is generally done with a SLR camera on a tripod. Use a timed shutter release so that your hand does not shake the camera. The tripod and long exposure allows for creative uses of motion, writes Smashing Tips, and will take rather surreal photos by capturing speed through blurring while focusing on other elements in the frame, such as the details of a person's expression while on a carousel. Technically, the long exposure also means that more "data" can be read from the scene in a low-light condition, which creates some eye-catching photos.
5. Use a photo editing program such as Photoshop to make ordinary photos surreal by playing with the light-dark balance and color-replacement tool. It's possible to make an ordinary photo of a woman in a garden surreal by turning selected hues red, isolating them, then transforming the rest of the photo into black and white. This will create a whimsical photo of black and white with perhaps the lips, cheeks and flowers in the garden colored in red.
