Hangang Bridge Long Exposure

When you cross the Han River on Line 1, during winter, at about the time rush hour starts, look out the window. You will see a snake of car lights on the road following the banks of the Han. This, I thought, might make for a decent long exposure shot.

Unfortunately the bridge I see this photo opportunity from is a rail bridge with no pedestrian access. Looking at the map I found that the road bridge a little further on had pedestrian access. Unfortunately it did not have heaters, duh, which would make standing next to the river for 30 -60 minutes, IN FEBRUARY, much more bearable. Sure, you can wait for the weather to warm up, but the sunset changes drastically between season, so at the moment I have no idea what the traffic is like just after sunset at other times of the year.

This past week I finally managed to work up the will to brave the cold and trek into Seoul. I got on the train, got of at Noryangjin, walked to the Hangang Bridge and found a spot I liked. To bad about all the shaking Wait, what?!

It turns out the cars driving over the bridge makes the whole structure vibrate. Lorries and busses makes the bridge shake. Yea, this is not exactly good for long exposures where you need to hold the camera motionless for as long as 30 seconds. Not even a tripod will steady that ship. Bridge, whatever.

I took a few sample shots to see what the view was like. Hand held with a fast shutter speed made the photos OK, but of course that is no way to get snaking light lines that long exposure gives.

Testing the view at 1/50s

As the light diminished, I started playing with exposure times The first shots were not all that long. They gave nice bright red snakes, but the lines didn’t seem continuous and the buildings in the background were too dark.

Seeing if it will work at 8.0s

Longer exposures filled in the shadows, but the periods where the cars on the bridge were not moving were really short, so anything over a 10 second exposure was rather luck of the draw. This meant most of the images ending up blurry with squiggly light lines.

25.0s without vibrations was just to much to hope for.

Messing around with the aperture to increase the auto shutter speed gave me one very long, unexpected shot. I ended up just taking the camera off the railing, putting it on the ground and doing something else while waiting for the shot to finish. It ended up looking kind of interesting, so much so that I tried to replicate it.

An unexpected 30.0s exposure ended up to be interesting.

In the end I did manage to get a shot that was relatively stable, but as you can see the very long exposure makes the colours from the lights blend together far to much.

13.0s or relative calm gave me a mostly useful shot.

The photo session turned out to be underwhelming, but I did serve as a good learning experience. Maybe if I can find a footbridge with a similar view then I will be able to get a stable camera set-up.