The best shooting locations are often disguised by daylight. It is the nightabsence of daylight that greatly transforms seemingly dull locations and reveals their essential nature. The beauty of night photography, or as I like to call it “The absence of superfluous light”, may seem an overly difficult field of photography. Excessive preparation, expensive equipment, years of experience and other preliminaries are often seen as a prerequisite. No reason to shy away from night photography. In fact, photographersmasters of capturing light are adept in exposing just what is needed and cleverly use darkness as an impervious shield to block out superfluous parts.
Click photo to enlarge Let me tell you that I snapped this photo on one of my reconnaissance tours. Done in a matter of seconds, no tripod used. Don’t get me wrong. Good equipment and preparation are essential if you want more than a few random lucky shots (and do use a tripod). Decent preparation precedes excellent results and is a sine qua non for both amateur and pro. And so is experience: practice, practice, practice. An experienced eye enables you to reduce the time on location, take the shot and move on to the next. It also gives you the ability to quickly judge whether and more importantly where the light situation is just right, or if it’s better to come back another time (in low light allow 10 minutes for your eyes to adapt). Go out and practice, don’t sit at home and read articles about night photography 😉 If you agree with me, share this article.
