Skyline Night Shots

Once a healthy interest in photography manifests itself in a budding photographer it will not be long before the desire to produce a good night shot will emerge. I think the main reason for this is that in order to produce a good night shot you have to actually understand photography, at least a little. In other words, producing a good night shot by getting lucky is highly unlikely, therefore a complete novice is unlikely to be able to do it. This fact by definition makes a good night shot more rare than other types of photos. Having said that it really is not very difficult to create pleasing night photos. Up to this point I have not mentioned equipment at all but now is as good a time as any to start. IN ORDER TO GET DECENT NIGHT SHOTS YOU HAVE TO USE A GOOD TRIPOD...or at least a good camera support of some kind. A good night shot requires a slower than usual shutter speed from as fast as a second or two up to several minutes or longer. It is humanly impossible to hold a camera steady at these speeds...in fact I believe it's impossible to hold the camera steady at speeds that are significantly faster than that. The one best piece of advice I can give someone on taking good night shots is this...DO NOT TAKE THE NIGHT SHOT AT NIGHT! This may sound counterintuitive but it makes sense. The time to take a good night shot is when it is becoming night. The lights in the buildings of a typical skyline tend to come on at around sunset. At this time of day there is still plenty of light in the sky which when recorded by your camera will tend to produce color in the sky (as opposed to just darkness). Because the sky is not pure darkness the outline of the buildings are much more defined and the buildings themselves contrast beautifully with the color in the sky. Also, since you are shooting on a tripod it is possible to shoot at low ISO levels which will produce a higher quality file with less noise, even in shadow areas. A couple of more tips when shooting night shots which might be helpful are as follows. If you have a remote to trigger the shutter, use it. By doing so you will further reduce the chance of camera shake, keeping your picture as sharp as possible. If you don't have a remote set the camera's drive mode to self timer, get the camera all set up, press the shutter and step back. The camera will delay a few seconds (depending on how you set your self timer) and then fire, reducing further the potential for blur. Also, many people seem to like that star like effect that a night shot might produce on a light such as a street light. By keeping your aperture at a small size such as f16 you can produce this effect. Let's take a look at the shot above. This is a night shot that was taken before it actually became night but no one would argue that it's a daytime shot. The sky has plenty of light and the blueness of it makes for a much more pleasing photo. If this shot was taken in the dead of night the edges of the buildings might have blended right in with the darkness and produced a picture that looked as though it was a bunch of floating lights in a sea of darkness. (This is not to say that a good night shot can't be done when it's totally dark...I have seen excellent shots done this way many times). The more night shots you take the better you'll get at it. One last thing...don't be afraid to give the photo the exposure it needs. Too many night shots I see are underexposed and could have used a slower shutter speed. The light at twilight is much less intense than at high noon so overexposure is harder to achieve.