After dark you will find many shops completely blacked out but those which are lit or partially lit offer unique opportunities to photograph empty places.
Without people around to question what you are doing you can spend the time you need to do to find great subjects to capture. Look for different colours of light and repeated objects – here the local laundromat provides a moody subject which is only enhanced by the grain from the high ISO setting used.
Labels: closed shops, Helen Bradley, night, Photography, photography how to, tips
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In busy cities and even in country towns you will find that the activity at night differs from that during the day.
Tankers deliver fuel, people clean areas that aren’t cleaned during the day and they are all great subjects to shoot.
Take the time to search out unusual activities to capture them. Here a cleaner was throwing up a cloud of steam and water and, captured in the night lights of the shops it made for an interesting shot.
Labels: Helen Bradley, lowlight phototgraphy, night, night activity, Photography, photography how to, tips
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At night, if you’re using what light there is, you need capitalize on it. One option is to look for silhouettes where you capture a subject in front of a light source.
In this image shot in New York after dark on a wet night I used the lights of the oncoming traffic to backlight this woman as she walked down the road trying to hail a cab.
Because she was moving fast I was walking behind her at a similar pace so there was no chance to stop or use a slow speed so this image had the ISO set high to capture what light I had.
Labels: backlight, ISO, light source, night, night photography, Photography, silhouettes, tips
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While a flash is handy for taking snapshots of friends, it’s useless when the subject is more than about 10-15 feet away as this is the range of a typical flash. It also makes it impossible to shoot candid images.
So, the best solution to shooting at night is to turn the flash off – before you head out, make sure you know how to disable the camera’s flash so it doesn’t fire.
If your camera lets you do so, set the ISO equivalent to use for capturing the shot, increase this at night to 1600 or more. In the shot above the ISO was 6400, the image is grainy but a flash would have disturbed the couple and that would have spoiled the candid moment.
The shots will be more grainy – like film, shots taken at higher ISO levels are more grainy even when shot digitally. However, grain is not a ‘bad thing’ and night time images can look particularly interesting when the film grain is obvious.
Labels: disable flash, film look, flash, grainy, ISO, low light, night, night photography, no flash, Photography, tips
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At night what can look very uninteresting during the day can take on an entirely different look.
A single light on a wall or a neon sign can make an interesting shot and, when it is raining you’ve got a double bonus of night lights and reflections in the wet surfaces.
Labels: interest, interesting images, low light, night, night photography, Photography
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