We discuss the use of long-exposure digital photography in introductory mechanics laboratories. Students at New Mexico State University use inexpensive digital cameras to record the motion of objects with attached blinking light emitting diodes. These photographs are used to make inferences about the velocity and acceleration of the moving object. We use the analysis of these photographs to promote student understanding of the vector nature of kinematics quantities. In subsequent laboratories we build on this understanding to help students relate the acceleration vector for a moving object to the net force vector for that object.We give details about the equipment we use and describe the sequence of activities that we have developed for a two-dimensional motion laboratory and for a laboratory on Newton's second law. Finally we present some pre- and post-test data on questions related to the concepts underlying these laboratories.