Main Street Fort Worth

[txredneck52]

I took this last night with the intent of going back on a friday or saturday to get the motion blur of cars driving down the streets. what can make it better? exif:
nikon d60 lens 18-55mm
f/20
exp 20 sec
iso 100
55mm

[Krusty79]

The buildings and the street look underexposed to me, so I think a longer exposure is needed. The bright lights may be blown out if you do that, but I find them distracting and was going to suggest you edit them so they are not so bright and distracting. Like the ones on the right side - you can just clone in that blue color to cover up the white spots.

I also think you need some longer red streaks that cover more of the length of the street. Right now, they look pretty short.

You might also experiment with capturing cars coming at you and/or using their turn signals to get a variety of lights and colors in the shot.

[gptwins]

If your interested in just the light trails from the cars, you can probably keep the shutter open a few more seconds without over exposing.

If, however, you wish to be able to see the cars as they are passing, then open the aperture a bit and use a shorting time.

Here are some examples I tried from the Dallas "High Five" area a few months ago.

http://geenfoto.smugmug.com/Cars/LightTrails

[Doug Sundseth]

I don't have a problem with your exposure. It's dark, but you're trying for a night scene, so that's reasonable.

But I think your composition could use a bit of work:

The bottom of the image is visually uninteresting. It's mostly just black and lacking interesting details.

On both sides of the top of the image, you have lights that lead my eye up and out of the frame.

I'd start by lowering the point of view of the camera down toward the pavement and aiming it upward. Try to get the tops of the lit buildings in the frame and move the lit part of the street and the light trails down toward the bottom of the frame.

Oh, and don't get run over.

[Jeffh42]

Did you use a timed release for the shutter. The point light sources both left and right seem to have a L shape to them that makes me think you didn't but it would prevent releasing the shutter from moving the camera. When doing night shots I use a 2 second delay and it works great