Night Photography

The average photographer hangs up the camera and heads for the house after sunset and the real amateur often gives up before the sun goes down.  Take your photography to a new level by working after dark!

Actually, night photography is lots of fun and can result in some very interesting images.  No special equipment is required, just a camera, lens and tripod.  A fast lens is nice but not really essential.  You really don't even have to pump up the ISO and I highly recommend that you DO NOT use the "night photography" preset that is offered on some cameras.  Just open up the lens and leave the white balance set to "auto".  You may be amazed at the interesting results you get in the mixed lighting situations that exist at night, especially in cities.

Returning from a recent nature photography trip to south Florida, I stopped in St. Augustine and ended up staying for three nights.  St. Augustine is a very interesting city with lots of history, an old fort that is beautifully preserved, and a downtown area that is beautiful and very nicely lit at night.  It offers great opportunities for night photography in a safe environment.  The city has added lights to trees and buildings that create many opportunities for interesting compositions.  To make things even better there are lots of downtown motels and B&B's with reasonable rates and lots of good restaurants.  Need I say more???

Just one of MANY interesting places to stay during a visit to St. Augustine.  No special exposure setting was required for this shot.  I just put the camera on a tripod, set up was aperture priority and I let the camera meter handle the exposure.  White balance was set to auto.  Exposure was f4 for 2.5 seconds.




A short walk of about 2 blocks put me into the main historic area of St. Augustine with beautifully lit buildings, motels, museums, city parks, restaurants, and people enjoying the mild February evening.  On this evening it was warm enough to dine outside.

This is one of the public parks in the city.  As you can see, they have gone all out to make the city attractive and inviting.

One of the big draws for St. Augustine is Ghost Tours.  In this image I got a shot of three ghosts strolling through the city park.

Exposure f4 for .6 seconds.  With this shutter speed, anything that moves will blur.



There are two special effects in this image.  The exposure for this was f11 for 8 seconds.  The 8 second exposure caused the water to blur and actually smooth out as the movement painted itself on the sensor.  The second effect is the star pattern around the point light source of the streetlight.  Even the smaller lights on the trees have a star effect.  This effect varies depending on the design of your lens so you will need to experiment.  As you stop a lens down, strong point light sources will diffract along the blades of your lens aperture creating a star pattern.  You cannot see this in the viewfinder, only on the final image.

In post processing you always have the option of being creative with the color balance or you can be more realistic.  In this image I made it more realistic by cooling the color temperature to bring it closer to what the scene looked like to my eye.  Notice the two ghosts in the sidewalk?

This image was exposed at f13 for 13 seconds at 13 after the hour on the 13th of the month.  I hope it's not unlucky!

Don't put up your camera at night.  There are many great opportunities to make interesting images at night and if travel photography is interesting to you, night photography gives you a chance to add some unusual images to your show that most people are not used to seeing.