Tips On Night Photography
It’s not common that after the sun sets, the majority of photographers take their equipment off and head home. People who stick around often find moments of extraordinary beauty and magical shots that only happen once in the course of time.
Photographers, at the very least, those who are good, are fascinated by light. Therefore, when the key light of hydrogen ions that is situated 96 miles away from the subject, filtering through a 100-mile diffusion screen of water vapor, isn’t available anymore and you’ll have to work with artificial light or extremely long exposures. Most often, it’s a mix of both.
The problem with artificial light at night comes from the wide variety of temperatures in any setting. Halogens, sodium vapor, mercury vapor, and fluorescents HPD lamps are all interspersed in strange and atypical ways. It’s enough to cause the camera’s automatic white balance a good fit. One way to do this is to bracket your night photos using different AWB settings.
It’s probably best to accept this rather than make too many color corrections on the spot. The mixing of different temperatures in a variety of ways is part of the fun. If you require color corrections, you could accomplish the majority of this through post-processing. This is especially true for the photos you take in RAW format.
It’s at certain times of the day that will give you the most stunning shots. There’s a moment when the light in the sky is dimming, but then the lights have turned to live. It’s the perfect time to begin shooting. Continue shooting until it’s totally dark.
I keep a flashlight equipped with a red filter within my camera bag to use for working in the dark. It’s enough light to view the levels of bubbles on the camera and tripod settings but won’t affect the night’s vision. Use a strap that is velcro to hold your flashlight to the tripod so that you can locate it even in darkness.
The issue of level is when there’s no horizon visible in the viewfinder. It’s one of the times you’ll need to be sure of your tripod.
Classic Night Shots
The most famous night-time tricks include the yellow and red lines running through night shots of highways. These are caused by vehicles that pass by during the exposure. It’s actually quite simple to create the effect. You only need to locate someplace where cars are moving quickly. Set your manual ISO in the range of 160 and 200. You can let the camera adjust the exposure, or you can use using the “B” option and then hold the button in a manual manner.
Take a few minutes to let a few cars go by and observe how it turned out. Adjust and re-shoot if needed.
Light Painting
Another option that can be utilized when using long-exposure photos at night is lighting painting. There are a variety of options to add supplemental lighting that you can create your own.
An easy method is to expose the background and then paint an object that is foreground with a fill flash. This is a good option when you have a noticeable foreground feature that does not possess any lighting by itself.
It is also possible to use flashlights and glow sticks or any other lighting devices and paint or draw on your dark backdrop.
Night photography is your only chance to loosen up and play around and have fun.
