Night Photography

Recently I was asked by PhotoPlus magazine to accompany an amateur photographer around Bristol city centre to photograph striking photos of the city after dark. The resulting photos made up a 12 page feature in PhotoPlus magazine. We started by overlooking the iconic Bristol Harvey Nicholls building (on the edge of Cabot Circus), then we moved onto the quirky bendy bridge from Finzels Reach to Castle Park by the water, then we finished by looking across the Horn Bridge to Millennium Square with the lit up wheel, with Za Za Bazaar.

Tips & Tricks
Night photography takes a certain discipline, as automatic settings will give you blurry and disappointing results. In the following tips and tricks I talk about how best to approach your night photography, when to go, what equipment to take with you, the best settings to use and a mention of personal safety, too.

1. Timing
It’s worth arriving at your location in good time, even up to an hour before sunset to get in position and to make sure you’ve put the correct settings on the camera, ready to capture the magic blue hour when there’s amazing blue colours in the sky, this blue colour quickly turns into night with much darker skies.

2. Vibrations
Watch out for vibrations caused by passing traffic if you’re using a long shutter speed, it might even be pedestrians if you’re on a footbridge, make sure the tripod is on solid ground with rubber feet.

3. Tripod and timers
It’s very easy to introduce blur to your photos when you press the shutter button so if you don’t have a remote shutter release cable, use the 2 or 10 second self-timer drive mode on your camera, so you don’t add blur in shots as you press the button.

4. Depth of field
Consider how much of the picture you want to be in focus when you’re about to press the shutter, which f-stop would suit the scene? If you want everything sharp, use an aperture such as f/8 or f/11, and focus on something in the middle distance to get optimum sharpness front and back.

5. Using Live View and Zoom
In Live View preview mode, zoom in on the screen as close as possible to check focus. You may have to change the AF points to achieve this, on Canon cameras you have to switch off eye or face Tracking AF when photographing at night.

6. Which lens to use?
Try the obvious lens choice, such as a wide-angle 17-40mm (full-frame) or standard 50mm, but then challenge yourself to be creative – what different feels can you achieve from the scene? Sometimes after the shoot you will think of other ideas which could’ve worked so make a point of writing them down ready for next time.

7. Check your shots
Regularly check the sharpness of your photos at full zoom on the back screen, mostly to make sure the shutter speed, ISO or aperture is working as you’d hoped. Sometimes, if you’re using a zoom lens, simply turning the barrel and therefore the distance it is zoomed in to can throw off your focus, and can catch you out. Re-check the live view at 100% to make sure it hasn’t roamed.

8. Keep an eye on lines and angles
When taking architectural photos, it’s important that buildings are straight and level (if you want straight photos, that is!), so have a look at the spirit level on your tripod and/or camera screen, and adjust your tripod head and legs as necessary.

9. Road safety
Never get too close to the road or edge of the pavement – it’s easy to lose yourself in your creativity and forget about safety.

10. Bulb mode
Use the Bulb setting for exposures over 30 seconds – you can then capture more densely packed traffic light trails. You’ll need a remote release to start/stop the exposure. Also use a 3-stop ND filter and extend exposures from 30 seconds to four minutes!

Hope you’ve enjoyed these tips, let me know of anything else you’d like me to feature next time!

If you would like me to provide some photography or videography tips for your website then please send an email with your details.

With thanks to PhotoPlus magazine