This series of lessons about night photography is not an absolute beginner one; an amount of photography knowledge is required for you to be able to adventure with your camera into the night. If terms like exposure, ISO, metering mode, etc. are new to you, please read my beginners tutorial first, so you can fully understand the next series of night photography lessons. Also feel free to ask me any question you might have about your journey into the night photography, I will be very happy to help you.

Night Photography

In photography, light is everything; so many photographers are tempted to pack their gear when night falls. This can be a wrong move, since they are missing out capturing some of the most stunning and visually exciting images. The daylight is not everything in photography, you can also capture amazing shots and create great visual effects after the night has fallen, using, for example, the city lights or some other sources of artificial light that are all around us at night. Taking photographs at night is a lot simpler to achieve than you might think and the results will give you a great reward for your work. After you have understood the concepts and the techniques that are used for night photography, you will be able to take great quality photos at night with just basic equipment.

Paris at dusk

An important aspect in night photography is choosing the right moment of the day for your shooting session. Depending on what exactly you want to shoot, it is not necessary to wait until the sky gets totally dark. Late dusk is usually preferred for many subjects and night photography techniques. This is when just a bit of light is left in the sky, after sunset. The advantage of shooting at this time is that you will have less large areas of complete black in your pictures; this reduces the contrast and adds more colors to your night shots. Another positive aspect of this time of the day is that the remaining light in the sky will fill in the shaded areas that are not illuminated by artificial light.

However, not all night shots should be taken at dusk. There are a lot of subjects and night photography techniques that are more successful with the total darkness of night. We will discuss and explain some of these in the next lessons of this series.