Have you ever noticed that the very best landscape photos seem to exhibit a timeless quality? This often comes about through the use of long exposures to not only capture the scenes in question, but to convey an impression of something beyond that which is depicted.

Timeless landscape photos are often created by juxtaposing static and moving subject matter during a long exposure. Buildings, piers and signs are examples of man made static subject matter, while trees and rocks are nature based elements often incorporated into long exposure landscape photos.

It’s worthwhile thinking about the importance of timelessness and how we can bring it into our own creative photography more often than we do.

Some landscape photos even exhibit an ethereal, transient quality. It’s as though they exist, somehow, outside of time. These images can suggest possibilities and realities outside of our normal everyday experience.

The best way to connect, on an emotional level, with these kind of timeless landscape photos is to undertake the process of creating long exposure landscape photos for yourself.

It’s a journey of the heart and of the mind, and it’s an exploration that’s open to all of us through the art of creative photography.

It was great fun making the above photo along the Great Ocean Road in Australia. The gentle light of twilight illuminated the landscape in a soft, romantic glow.

The resulting photo is picturesque, despite the rugged nature of this wind blown landscape on the edge of the Southern Ocean.

But it’s the movement of the incoming tide, washing over the rocks on the bottom right corner of the frame, that subtly moves the image into a more ethereal space.

The notion of recording movement within a still frame is one of the great gifts photography provides the creative photographer.

I find it fascinating that, while the sharpness of the seemingly immobile rock face provides a sense of permanence to the image, the moving water very much suggests the inevitable destructive force of nature and, thereby, the transience nature of existence.

Timeless Landscape Photos made with Long Exposures

What do people mean when they use the term timeless in relation to photography? Rather than it being about a specific time or place, I think the term timeless is used to describe a look, feeling or state that seems, somehow, beyond that which is depicted.

I can certainly remember experiencing a palpable sense of timelessness and serenity when I made this photo at the spectacular Jökulsárlón Glacier Lagoon.

It was near the end of a gloriously long summer’s evening making landscape photos in Iceland. I even managed to organize a midnight cruise on the lagoon, an experience for which I’II be forever grateful.

You can see how the warmth of the sunset, and its reflection on the surface of the lagoon, provided a striking contrast in color and mood with the aqua color of the icebergs and the purple hue of the distant mountains.

The little iceberg in the foreground was moving out of the glacier on it’s way to the sea. I needed to keep it and the clouds sharp, while at the same time create more of an impressionistic effect by introducing a little blur to the surface of the glacier.

The simply solution I used to create the image was to employ a sturdy tripod and a shutter speed slow enough to record the movement of the water while, simultaneously, rendering the slower moving iceberg sharp.

The shutter speed was slow enough to blur the water’s surface, thereby creating a smooth, largely textureless area over which the iceberg travels.

What an amazing experience and a night I’II long remember.

Achieving A Sense Of Timelessness Through A Long Exposure

Is it any wonder the landscapes of Huangshan (i.e., Yellow Mountain) in Eastern China inspired scenes from Avatar, the famous and ground breaking motion picture film from director, James Cameron?

I spent 3 amazing days hiking and photographing across Huangshan, and it remains one of the great experiences of my life.

I did so during the middle of winter and was enveloped in cloud throughout most of my time exploring Yellow Mountain.

However, while distant views were reduced and, often, obliterated due to the weather, existing inside a cloud was, for me, very much an out of this world experience.

Together with the almost complete lack of other tourists at that time of year, being surrounded by near white really did feel like I’d been transported to another reality, out of space and time, as I’d normally experience it.

I remember moving off the main trail and exploring a few side paths during my journey.

I began to wonder if this kind of exploration was encouraged, as these paths were not maintained through the same diligent sweeping, undertaken by special workers, as the main trails on the mountain.

But I saw no signs to say otherwise.

In most cases following these secondary paths proved to be physically challenging, though I managed to make some of my best photos on Huangshan Mountain by doing so.

In this case, however, the path was short and lead me to a viewing platform where I met up with a hiking group from Taiwan.

I stood around talking with them for a few minutes and, just as the cloud cover started to clear, I excused myself and got busy making some pictures as the above scene emerged from the nothingness that had surrounded us.

There wasn’t much space to move so I set up my tripod, calculated my camera settings and got busy making images as varying degrees of mist ascended up through the scene.

Back in my studio in Australia I’ve rendered this scene in both color and black and white. While I like the cool, aqua hues of the rising mist, I’d say the black and white version is best.

By removing color from the scene, the viewer is left with less information from which to form a cohesive reality.

This is the very essence of minimalism, as less information begins to remove the objects photographed from their surroundings and, as a consequence, places them onto another plane, out of time and space.

It’s one of the great benefits of black and white photography, particularly when combined with the sense of ethereal movement emanating out of long exposure photography.

Camera generated exposures are usually taken in a fraction of a second, and the best images that result seem to suspend that moment in time for years to come.

Such images effectively freeze time and become a kind of time capsule that documents the look, fashion and lifestyle of days past.

But what I’m referring to in this post is our ability to transcend the here and now through creative, long exposure landscape photography.

If you haven’t already done so, I encourage you to try photographing moving subjects, like water and clouds, with long exposures.

Things That Are Timeless In Our World

Now, of course, most fashions date. Do you remember when the quintessential blue jeans almost went out of fashion following the introduction of cargo pants?

I think the term timeless really suggests a look, feeling or mood that seems to transcend the fashions of the day.

It’s a bit like ice cream. Flavors like hokey pokey and tutti fruity come and go but, for most folks, chocolate remains their flavor of choice.

Am I right?

This makes me wonder about some other things that remain timeless in our lives. Some may be universal while others could be considered personal. Still, here’s a few from my own list of timeless classics.

• Paintings from the Masters like Rembrandt, Leonardo da Vinci and Caravaggio

• The Beatles music

• Momma’s cooking

• That little black dress

• Roaring fires and candlelight

• Joy or wonder expressed on the face of a child

Can you think of things in your own life that you consider to be timeless?

Black and White Photos Often Have a Timeless Quality

One of the reasons why folks often refer to black and white sepia toned prints as being timeless is that they provide a sense of an idealized reality, even if it’s a fiction.

This notion seems applied equally to darkroom made prints, from years gone by, and contemporary black and white images produced on the desktop.

I think this is one of the reasons why warm tone black and white images still work today, even when applied to more contemporary subject matter.

Think of these images as examples:

• Portrait of a newborn baby or of a centenarian

• Urban landscape showcasing an old Victorian age building

• Facade of a suburban milk bar that’s been closed for years

This kind of subject matter, when well lit and composed, can really lend itself to rendering into a black and white or sepia toned photo.

Is Love Timeless?

Love does not date in so much as it’s possible to fall in love more than once or, for some honest, respectful and lucky folk, to remain in love till death us do part.

I made the above photo of the Walker Fountain on a cold and wet Melbourne night in a park just opposite the National Gallery of Victoria.

I was running a Night Photography course and, despite the winter weather, the group and I really had a blast making photos based upon long exposures.

In this case I rendered the original color image into a warm toned, black and white picture to take it out of it’s contemporary setting and imbue it with a sense of timelessness.

It’s a helpful technique, particularly when the scene includes cars and other elements from our contemporary world.

What we refer to as timeless probably suggests a purer, less chaotic time imagined through a nostalgic view of the world as it once was.

Perhaps, such a world exists for folks living a simpler, more rural lifestyle than our own.

Photographs from days gone by often depict a slower, less complicated and, in some ways, safer world. And there’s no doubt our contemporary world can seem hectic and chaotic at times.

Given that, I think it’s completely logical, in this day and age, to harken back to the seemingly simpler times we associate with a bygone era.

But how do we remain in this world while, at the same time, find how to live a simpler, happier life?

For me it’s through travel and the creative arts, particularly photography. I’d go as far to say that I’ve experienced genuine bliss through my own creative photography.

It doesn’t always come easy, particularly when significant travel and physical exertion are required to get me to exotic locations around the world to undertake my photography.

But it’s also true to say that my mood meter is frequently moved towards the bliss end of the scale when I get out and about in my own neck of the woods and explore the transforming, transient and transcendental beauty of light on the world around me.

This can happen anywhere, particularly when I’m walking. But the experience is most profound and, of course, can be recorded for posterity, when I’m undertaking long exposure landscape photography adventures.

I wrote a lovely post titled Follow Your Bliss: How to be Happy by Living a Creative Life which I’m sure you’ll love.

the Timeless Romance of a Viking Village

I’m really happy with the sense of timeless romance I’ve been able to imbue in this image of a Viking village in a mountain setting near the town of Höfn in rural Iceland.

The setting was dramatic and, despite the fact that it’s a replica settlement that’s been built as a movie set, it’s quite a realistic result.

If anything, it’s hyper realistic, given the fantastic amount of fine details and textures recorded win the building, grasses and surrounding landscape.

The tonal scale of this image also lends itself well to a black and white reproduction. The spread of tones, from deep black through grays of varying luminance to near whites, are well dispersed throughout the image.

Notice how the lighter tones of the building lead the eye to the fence, woodpile, steps and, to a lesser extent, the finely textured scree on the mountainside.

Likewise, see how the fence line leads up to and around the building facade, creating a frame in which the woodpile, steps and grass exist.

Notice also how the darker rocky outcrop of the mountain and the rooftop of the building separate the clouds above from the rest of the image.

Together they act as a kind of horizon to separate the sky from what’s below, making a frame for the sky to exist within.

In fact, I’d say there are 2 horizons in this image.

There’s the ridge line, running down onto the rooftop and continuing, up and down the roof, to the far right hand side of the image.

But there’s also the fence line, which meanders from the left of the picture until it meets the building where, once again, it makes its way up and down the rooftop to the far right side of the image.

Both of these horizons work to separate the earth, and that which is placed onto it, from the sky while also separating the image into three distinct areas: the building and grasses; the mountainside and the ridge line above; and the cloud filled sky.

In this case the timeless quality of the subject matter, and surrounding scenery, was apparent to me when I photographed the scene.

I knew I had the opportunity to create an evocative image that spoke to the life, albeit somewhat idealized, of early Viking settlers in Iceland.

But, I had a problem. In this case there was so much cloud cover that a long exposure would likely record the sky as a mass of featureless white.

When making long exposure landscape photos, with a cloudy sky, you need to ensure that around thirty to fifty percent of the sky will be free of cloud cover throughout the exposure.

That will give you soft, blurry clouds set against a seemingly solid and darker sky. That, in itself, is a visually interesting juxtaposition.

For this particular image I needed the tiny areas of sky to remain visible and visually separated from the clouds. I also wanted to retain the three dimensional, cotton ball appearance in the tiny clouds.

The solution was a relatively fast 1/640 second shutter speed at iso 100.

Because this was a physically large scene I used my 16-35 mm f4 Sony lens at a focal length of 17 mm to fit it into the frame.

Maximum detail retention was important to me. Therefore, I chose an aperture of f11 to provide the large depth of field which rendered the scene sharp, from the near foreground to the distant background.

Daytime Long Exposure Photography

I believe the feeling of timelessness we associate with black and white photos can be even stronger in the case of long exposure, landscape photography.

Take a look at this image of fast moving water as it cascades over rocks, near the spectacular Milford Sound, on the South Island of New Zealand.

I secured my camera on my sturdy, Really Right Stuff tripod and waited for the wind to stop blowing.

As you can imagine, patience was required as I needed to ensure absolute stillness in the surrounding foliage during the long exposure time, while recording the moving water within the otherwise mostly static scene.

This combination of sharpness and blur is special and, as you can see, produces fantastic results.

I utilized a 72-second long exposure, at iso 100, to create this image of moving water that, to my way of thinking, points to the great mystery at the heart of the human condition.

I refer to this mystery as the sublime.

While the sun had set and twilight had arrived, there was still far too much light around for a 72-second long exposure.

In addition to the camera’s iso 100 base sensitivity, I employed 16 stops of Neutral Density (ND) filters in front of the lens to dramatically reduce the light reaching the sensor and, thereby, extend the required exposure time.

To further increase the drama in the scene I used my Sony 16-35 mm f4 lens at 16 mm to place emphasis on the shape and texture of the rocks closest to the camera.

To ensure the depth of field was sufficient to render the entire scene sharp, from the very near foreground to the distant background, I set my lens’s aperture to f11.

With clouds and/or water moving through the frame we have the ability to explore the passage of time within the bounds of a still photograph.

This strange juxtaposition is one of the most potent means by which timeless landscape photos are created.

It allows us to explore the illusory nature of time and transcend the scene or subject depicted so as to glimpse a heightened, more profound understanding outside of the reality of the moment.

Together with the interplay of light on the landscape, this is why I love to create long exposure landscape photos.

How To Make Great Long Exposure Photos

Are you interested in progressing your landscape photography to the next level?

I’d recommend you utilize long exposures to photograph moving water and, in the process of doing so, explore the notion of the timeless landscape in your own photography.

Can you imagine the great photos you’ll be able to add to your own landscape photography portfolio after undertaking this challenge?

Here’s how you’d go about doing so.

• Simply find an interesting location with the right kind of subject matter. That being one or more solid, stationary objects with water moving through, over or around them.

• Next, add in a sturdy tripod, good technique and, if required, a low iso and a neutral density filter to extend your exposure time.

  By doing so you’ll be able to juxtapose the movement of the water against the seemingly immovable rock, tree or man made structure in your image.

• Do all of the above under beautiful light and be amazed at the success you’ll achieve.

Your camera’s shutter speed allows you to control the amount of light reaching the camera’s sensor, via the time between the shutter opening and closing, but also the way in which the subject or scene in front of you is rendered.

To help you better understand this concept I’d advise you to undertake the following online research.

Task 1

Locate up to 5 images from the internet that explore the notion of time and/or movement. Each photo needs to clearly showcase 1 specific exploration of the notion of time. Examples could include the following:

- Freezing action

- Creative blur

- Nostalgia

- Decay

- Metamorphosis

- Birth

- Youth

- Ageing

- Transcendence

- The Journey

Task 2

Add to your selection up to 5 of your own photos that demonstrate the very same explorations of time.

It’s not necessary that either your own images, or those you’ve found online, are landscape based images.

However, your own photographs should be landscape/nature based or at least suggest or re-interpret the natural world in a visually interesting and thought provoking way.

Please note:

If you don’t believe you have any images that meet this criteria, simply reverse the first two tasks by, firstly, making some images for yourself, then going online to find images that match the concepts that have emerged from the photos you’ve created.

Task 3

From the up to 10 images you’ve assembled consider the various notions of time, from each paring of images you’ve assembled. That’s up to 5 notions of time discussed through up to 5 pairs of images.

Creating Timeless Landscape Photos Awaits You

Exploring timeless landscape photos by depicting movement, within the bounds of an otherwise static scene is fantastic fun. And it’s all based around well composed and thoughtful long exposure photography.

Imbuing a photo with a sense of timelessness will allow you to tell a story, explore a concept or suggest new and interesting ways of seeing which go beyond a straight rendering of the scene or subject in question.

The way we photograph time, by either freezing the moment or depicting actual movement, often within an otherwise sharp image, allows us to explore concepts of reality, suggestion or abstraction.

It allows us to produce images in the now that, somehow, harken back to days gone by or suggest possible future outcomes or alternate states of being.

The notion of photographs as time capsules is important, as is our ability to use time to explore concepts of nostalgia, decay and metamorphosis.

I whole heartedly encourage you to explore long exposure photography and, by doing so, make the kind of creative photos that will transport you beyond the here and now.

Glenn Guy, Travel Photography Guru