# Long exposure

Motion / Subject motion and speed / Speed. Checked 2026-11-13.

Moving things smear into trails while the still things stay sharp.

- Use when: Night city stills, light trails, waterfalls, busy crowds around a still person.
- Phrase: a long exposure from a tripod, car lights stretched into red and white lines, the moving crowd blurred, she stands sharp in the middle
- Page: https://directorchair.ai/motion/long-exposure
- JSON: https://directorchair.ai/api/motion/long-exposure.json

## Watch out

- Say what moves (blurred) and what holds still (sharp); without that the whole frame blurs. (film-craft; General film vocabulary, as also used in Flim's filters)

## Prompts

### Nano Banana Pro

```
[your subject] in [your setting]. A long exposure from a tripod, car lights stretched into red and white lines, the moving crowd blurred, the subject stands sharp in the middle.
```

### Nano Banana 2

```
[your subject] in [your setting]. A long exposure from a tripod, car lights stretched into red and white lines, the moving crowd blurred, the subject stands sharp in the middle.
```

### GPT Image 2.5

```
A photograph of [your subject] in [your setting].
People and framing: a long exposure from a tripod, car lights stretched into red and white lines, the moving crowd blurred, the subject stands sharp in the middle
Exclusions: no extra text, no watermark, no logo.
```

### Seedream 5

```
[your subject] in [your setting]. A long exposure from a tripod, car lights stretched into red and white lines, the moving crowd blurred, the subject stands sharp in the middle.
```

### Seedance 2.5

```
Scene: [your subject] in [your setting].
Shot 1 (0:00 to 0:05): a long exposure from a tripod, car lights stretched into red and white lines, the moving crowd blurred, the subject stands sharp in the middle
```

### Seedance 2.0

```
Scene: [your subject] in [your setting].
Shot 1: a long exposure from a tripod, car lights stretched into red and white lines, the moving crowd blurred, the subject stands sharp in the middle
```

### Kling 3.0

```
[your subject]. A long exposure from a tripod, car lights stretched into red and white lines, the moving crowd blurred, the subject stands sharp in the middle. The scene is [your setting].
```

### Veo 3.1

```
[your subject] in [your setting]. A long exposure from a tripod, car lights stretched into red and white lines, the moving crowd blurred, the subject stands sharp in the middle. Framing and subject stay as in the start image.
```

## Look further

- https://shotdeck.com/ : real film examples of this look (paid, link only)
- https://flim.ai/ : film, ad and music-video stills of this look (free tier, link only)

## Goes well with

- Time-lapse: https://directorchair.ai/motion/time-lapse
- What moves and what stays: https://directorchair.ai/motion/what-moves-what-stays
- Night: https://directorchair.ai/time/night

## Source

Own words; the term from general film vocabulary, as also used in Flim's filters (its long-exposure preset)

Text CC BY 4.0, Director Chair (directorchair.ai). Reference clips and their card texts belong to their makers.