Photographer Michael Wesely plays around with extremely long exposures. In case you think we're exaggerating, it takes him two years or more to take one picture. In the wonderful world of digital photography immediate gratification, that's an awfully long time to wait for a single image to be completed, but in this case, it's worth it.

Wesely began using this method in Germany in the mid-1990s to document urban development and other city projects, and what better way to see how cityscapes change over time than with super long exposures? Instead of capturing hundreds or thousands of separate images over several years, one photograph shows it all.

Although most of his photographs for the Open Shutter project took between two to three years to create, Wesely believes that even longer exposures could be used to achieve a similar effect. Imagine a 40-year-long exposure! You can view more of Wesely's work in the gallery below, and on his website, including the book he made especially for this project.

Michael Wesely, via PetaPixel