Here’s a little trick to deceive your eyes when doing a long exposure on your iPhone. This was brought to my attention by another fellow iPhone photographer, and I thought it was a great tip to have under your belt.
When you are on a moving object and you take a long exposure looking out, be conscious of what you’re taking a photo of. If your long exposure is short enough, the foreground objects will blur as intended, but your background objects that are so are away will look like they are still.
The photo above, for example illustrates this tip. I was standing inside a subway car, looking out the window. I shot this at probably 1/2 sec. or maybe even less. The tracks and ground are all blurry, but the bridge and buildings in the background aren’t blurred as much because they are so far back from the camera.
The photo below is another take on this tip. I was standing very far away from the boats in the water so while you see the water all blurry, the boats stayed sharp. It worked out great in this situation too.
Be on the lookout for what you’re shooting the next time you do any long exposures, and you may be able to trick your friends in wondering how you were able to achieve this without Photoshop!