Understanding The Intricacies Of Night photography

A mysterious and awesome style of photography practiced at the late hours in dark is commonly referred as night photography. Photography at night includes the hours between twilight to dusk. Traditionally the lack of lighting in night photography was compensated with artificial lighting or even long exposures.

The long exposures can last form half a second up to even 30 seconds, this gives the film enough time to capture a likable image. Moreover the exposures with create exclusive effects and sharper images.

The recent developments of higher-sensitivity digital image sensors, high-speed films, wide-aperture lenses and the powerful flashes make night photography easier with better use of the available light (like moonlight) for the night scenes.

A brief history

Two photographers- Brassai and Bill Brandt initially popularized night photography. The former was the first photographer to have produced black-and-white photographs of the streets of Paris at night. The later took advantage of the blackout conditions during World War II to photograph the streets of London in moonlight.

However, it was not before British-born photographer Michael Kenna’s commercial success in 1990’s that night photography emerged as a profession. His night photographs were mostly devoted on black-and-white cityscapes often shot between dusk and dawn in different locations of France, San Francisco, Japan, and England.

With the arrival of 21st century digital cameras, it became simpler for the photographers to decipher the intricacies of night photography. Now, you have a plethora of websites concentrating exclusively on night photography.

Subjects for night photos

Night photography has been vividly applied in astrophotography, which encompasses celestial bodies like the planets, moon, stars, etc. Some of the are other options for you include the artificial structures and abandoned buildings lit in moonlight, skylines of the city, industries or factories emitting smoke or vapor, firework at night, nightlife or rock concerts, thunderstorms, amusement rides, water bodies like lakes, rivers, canals, etc reflecting citylights or moonlights.

Techniques for night photography

The key to night photography is balancing aperture and shutter speed. It is essential that your camera support a long shutter speed. Remember, the aperture you choose would provide the depth of the field.

While taking a night photo, you should have a very long shutter speed (for example 5-15 seconds) and a very narrow aperture (high f-stop). Combining these, you would get a huge depth of field and everything will be in focus.

It would be better for you to apply the same rules that are applied to landscape pictures. Lead with lines into the main part of the scene so that the viewers are lured by your impression. You can consider the streetlights, the light from moving traffic, or even brightly lit fences as lines.

Consider the simple foreground objects to lend a greater depth to your nighttime image. For natural frames you can feature the image of a dark building.

You must have the knowledge that there exists no definite science for night photography. To be an expert in night photography, you need to experiment a lot with the low light exposures, figure out the best scenes.