I tried taking some pictures like this in hawaii, but it didn't work. Every time I tried to use a 1,2, or 3 second exposure, the result was always too bright. Blown out. Because light is always traveling, so if the shutter is open for two seconds, that's two seconds worth of sunlight hitting the lens. Of course it's going to be blown out. So I wondered how people do it successfully. I thought about putting sunglasses in front of the lens. The aperture is also important in doing pictures like this. The aperture, or f/stop, acts the same way that your pupil does. When you walk out into harsh sunlight, your pupil shrinks in diameter to let in less light. When you walk into a dark room, your pupil gets larger to let in more light. So with a camera, you can control the f/stop to do the same thing. Smaller numbers, like 2.8, mean that you're letting in more light. Larger numbers, like 22, which is the largest on my camera, mean you're letting in less light. So, even when I set my f/stop to the darkest I could make it, my 3 second exposures were still too bright.
I was in a photo gallery in Maui and I saw some more pictures with the moving water effect. I asked the guy, "How does he do this without his shots becoming white and blown out?" his answer was simple: "Oh, he has a neutral density filter". I found out that a neutral density filter is, pretty much, sunglasses for your camera lens. You can get them in a degree of stops, 2, 4, and 6 i think. So I went out and splurged and spent like 20 bucks on a 4-stop neutral density filter. So now, I can go all the way to f 26 if i want to.
And it did the trick for my pictures.
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