Photography at night is entirely different from photography during the day, and not only because there’s not as much light! At night, scenes often look dramatically different than during the day. In the daytime, the sun is usually the main source of light in photos, (be it direct sunlight, shady areas, or even indoors) and that’s what people are used to seeing every day. When the sun goes down, the sky gets dark and all the smaller sources of light come into play: streetlamps, city lights, moonlight, and even starlight!
Night photography has to be one of my favorite things to do with a camera. You get to capture scenes in ways that people rarely see, and there are things you can do to capture things on camera that are impossible to see with your naked eye!
This scene in San Francisco was captured using a 22 second exposure. During the time of the exposure, some cars drove through the scene leaving streaks of light from their headlights and taillights. A few cars were also standing still for part of the time, and you can see them imprinted on the scene. The roads were wet from rain, leaving beautiful reflections of building lights in the street.
The orange glow illuminating the trees in this scene was from a small campfire behind the truck. During the three minute exposure, my friend shone a small red headlamp on the truck and the ground in front of it. This technique is called “painting with light,” and it’s a great way to add light to certain areas of a scene in a long exposure. You can use any type of flashlight, and use the beam to “paint” light onto parts of the scene.
In this 17 minute exposure, you can actually see the rotation of the earth in star trails, centering around the North star. To get a good star trail photo, you need to get far away from any city whose light would pollute the sky. Experiment with different exposures to get the right look in your photo. To get long star trails, it’s best to use at least a 10 minute exposure.
This photo was captured in three minutes near Salt Point State Park in northern California. This illustrates how in night scenes, the moon’s light can act as sunlight. Clouds that were moving slowly appear to be streaking across the sky. You can even see some star trails in the upper right corner.
To best capture scenes like these, you do need a bit of equipment apart from your camera. A tripod is the most important thing, as a single night exposure can easily be five, ten, or more minutes in duration, and your camera must not move at all the whole time.
If you don’t understand the relationship between shutter speed, aperture, and ISO, take a look at this to get an idea: http://andysutterfieldphoto.blogspot.com/2010/12/reference-controlling-exposure.html
Since most night scenes have only a tiny fraction of the amount of light found during the day, you’ll need a longer exposure time to properly expose the scene. Most cameras with manually controllable shutters don’t have settings longer than 30 seconds. While you can work with this, it’s better to use the BULB setting. This means that as long as you hold the shutter button down, the shutter will stay open. You can buy a cable release with a locking shutter button online for $5-10 that allows you to set the camera and walk away from it while the shutter stands open indefinitely, or until you close it. If you want to try night photography, I recommend using a tripod and a locking cable release in addition to your camera.
So grab your camera, tripod, and cable release and go try some night photography! You’ll be amazed at the photos you can get with a little practice.
