No longer one filter at a time, EXTREME stacking

Ya, I said it, EXTREME stacking! Thats what I call it when I take my two largest stoppers and put them together. Thats right, the B+W ND110 AND the B+W ND106. That is a total blockage of 16 stops of light! I have tried it twice now and one time worked out for me. However, I believe I know where I went wrong the second time, so I know what to try next time.

So, why in the world would I want to take away that much light? For starters, so that I can learn even more! Crazy, I know. But I have spent the past 7 months learning and repeating the act of long exposures. I know my filters like the back of my hands. I know how to allow light and take away light. I know how to capture the stars. The entire reason why I even committed to a 365 project was to set a goal for me, so that I can learn something. I wanted to master long exposures, so my topic is LONG exposures! If I do a project in 2011, it will be a topic that I want to master, for example, shooting 100% of the time in manual mode. So any way, back to my point. 7 months later, I realized that I know what I am doing. I get to the beach, I put my filters on and I pretty much know what I want my aperture to be for what filter for what time. I don't want to sound like I know everything, because I don't, but its not really a challenge for me any more! Its just another day shooting. So, a few days ago, while out, I thought about taking the longer exposure to the next level. To have SO much stops of light blocked, that it would require minutes instead of seconds. I was inspired by one of my flickr contacts. So, thats what I did. I put on my two DARK filters and this is what I came up with.

The image here, is a total of 300 seconds long. That is a grand total of 5 minutes long! In the middle of the day at an f/8 aperture. Oh, and of course, because its me, I used ISO 100. When I took the image home and processed it, converting it to black and white, I knew I had to play around with more of these. I love the effect and I have to say, when I took the image, I KNEW it would be the most perfect black and white. And let me tell you, I am not huge on black and white, but I am for this type of work.

I hope you enjoy and I also hope you take the time to view my other images on my 365 day project on Flickr, they are all long exposures and pretty much, in a package, my style of photography.