Night Photography
Night photos can be challenging for many reasons. You will likely need long exposure times (1-30 seconds is very long for photos), Wide aperture (f/3.5 or lower), and you may have to bump up the ISO to 400 or more, so the image may be more grainy.
You have some options for night photos–I’d recommend you pick one kind and experiment with it until you get some good results. This will teach you more about making the proper adjustments than trying too many types of photos. You may want to take a few “quick & dirty” images with your highest ISO, and hand holding the camera, just to get a feel for the composition or setting before you dial in lower ISO, longer shutter speeds, and shutter timers. In any case aim to capture light. color, subjects, with minimum noise, and minimum camera shake. If you have blurring, it should be deliberate or chosen.
Options include:
- Outdoor Nature Scene
- Outdoor town/city scene with people or architecture
- Light painting–with a moving light source like car lights or light wands
- Night sky–best away from towns or cities
You will need either a tripod, or a very stable place to leave the camera. Also pressing the shutter will cause camera shake, so you will need to use the camera timer (or if you have one, a remote shutter). Cameras have a greater ability to capture light than the human eye, so experiment and see what you can discover. Sometimes accidents can be keepers.
You task is to turn in 3-4 of your best unedited images in a gallery (this preserves camera metadata) so we can see how you achieved your results.
Then two sets of edited images (before/after with Add Twenty/20) with some explanation of which setting you used and what effect you were aiming for.
Below I have included a Slideshow (not a gallery) just to show some samples of nighttime photos. The slideshow is created same way as a gallery, except that the “Type” option at the bottom right in the gallery tab is set to “sildeshow” instead of “Thumbnail grid”. You may want to use this in your own portfolio when you dont need to have metadata available (as in the gallery thumbnail grid option).