I love this shot. It's totally unattainable in "AUTO." Your DSLR is crying for you to spin that dial and add some human intervention to the exposure process. With a little creativity you can use your DSLR to capture or create something that's not normally visible to the naked eye using a long duration exposure.

In Matthew Fang's "Super S." (above) you'll notice the headlight trails and other standing lights are overexposed. His decision was to run a long exposure, capture the detail in the naturally lit elements and not worry about the lights which have none. This 117.4 second exposure was captured at f/22 with a 14mm lens. With a wide lens and small aperture he got a huge depth-of-field which made focusing (often difficult in the dark) a lot less critical.

Most handheld pictures need fast shutter speeds otherwise the natural shakiness of your body will render shots blurry. You can fix a lot of things in photography. Blurry isn't one of them.

To take long duration exposures you're going to need a steady brace like a tripod. I wrote "like a tripod" not just "a tripod" because sitting your camera on a steady surface works just as well. One of my favorite nighttime shots used a trash can instead of a tripod with my wallet under the lens to tilt it up a little!

You'll also need a device to hold your shutter open. Most DSLRs allow for long exposures timed by the camera up to a point. Longer, like Matthew's nearly 2-minute exposure need a little external hardware. I just checked on eBay and found remote shutter releases for my Canon starting at around $5.

Because long exposures often have such immense dynamic range (darkest-to-lightest) and provide many unreal views my opinion is there's no correct exposure. It is only your interpretation of the scene that counts. Experimentation is cheap and easy when all you're doing is filling a memory card.

If you need more inspiration check out Darren Rowse's "15 Stunning Examples" at Digital Photography School.