Not quite sure what happened...

Juano

But I like it!

David_S85

A little bit of rock n' roll, I think. I'd try that again, with purpose and conviction! Might be even more interesting.

Juano

Thanks! I was shooting long exposures of the Brasila bridge, but I must have moved the tripod slightly, the water reflections seem fine. Here is another shot from that night for context:

Richard

Definitely camera movement, but it's an interesting image.

Juano

Yes, camera shake for sure, combined with a long exposure. I’m tempted to explore the effect some more...

Stumblebum

It works though!

ziggy53

Hi Cristóbal, while I don't know exactly "how" it happened, I can describe fairly well "what" happened, and it will be a little difficult to recreate.

Thanks to your including the EXIF information, I can state that this was a 13 second exposure using a FF/FX Nikon D800, with a lens reported at 35mm. If this is accurate, then the image describes a significant tripod movement in 2 - directions, with possibly a lesser horizontal component:

1. One direction is a vertical component, probably concerning a tripod leg set to be straight ahead or straight behind, but in the line of axis of the lens. This movement is represented by the vertical streaks of light. Either this leg moved up and down, or perhaps just (mostly) down. This could have been the result of a gust of wind or someone/something bumping the tripod.

2. One direction occured to a right-most tripod leg, resulting in a more diagonal motion. This motion is approximately twice the distance travel compared to the other tripod leg travel (because the lines on the right side are approximately twice as long as those of the middle tripod leg.) Also notice how the diagonal lines are somewhat staccato. This is because it was a fairly rapid motion and the lights are flickering, likely at 60 cycles, during the travel. If we knew the exact type of lighting technology of the lights we could even count the number of pulses to determine the period of the disturbance.

3. The slight horizontal component almost looks like slippage of the tripod. The image blur seems indicative of this slippage.

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I believe that a fairly good working hypothesis is that some disturbance of the tripod caused 2 of the tripod legs to either raise or fall, depending upon when the disturbance/perturbation occured in the exposure.

Additionally, whatever happened, almost certainly occurred at either the start of the exposure or at the end of the exposure. Notice how the diagonal lines just stop at the top of travel? If the event occurred during the middle of the exposure then we should see a definite bright portion at both ends. Ih other words, because we do not see brights spots at the ends, the motion was effectively "clipped" from image capture by the end of capture or start of capture. (Either starting or ending at the top is possible, until we have more information.)

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If you can describe the ground conditions under the tripod, that would help tremendously to determine a more specific, likely cause.

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Crud,temporary lapse in brain function.

Remembering that the camera lens forms an inverted image, likely all of the above directional statements are opposite to reality. At least the statements referring to the "right" side of the tripod need to be changed to left, I think. I need sleep.

Nevermind the strikethrough text. I believe the original statements regarding left and right are accurate for digital photography and camera viewfinders with a Pentaprism or penta-mirror viewfinder, as well as those with an electronic viewfinder and/or LCD liveview.

Juano

Ziggy... Awesome comment and analysis!! Wow.

JonaBeth Russell

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and hypothesize that there are 2 independent movements, at different times. These could be back to back, but definitely not the same single moment. Any wind? Could've been a bump. Could've been anything really, but cool effect none the less!

Juano

Thanks

Cornflake

I think it's cool.