Continuing with the recent theme: Get motivated, go out there and shoot anytime anywhere!.. here are some night time photos I’d like to share. Just because the sun goes down doesn’t mean you can’t take any nice photos. At some point or time, we’ve all taken the kinds of photos at night where bright flash is in your face, you have red-eye, and everything else behind you is pitch black. It can be discouraging… but with a little bit of adjustment, nighttime shots can produce some really creative photos. Don’t be afraid to take photos at night.
Click through for more photos… and tips on how to improve your night shots.
Here are some quick tips that hopefully will help you conquer the night.
Take the flash off-camera:
You will need a speedlight for this, but it will immediately add some dimension to your photos. By doing this, you instantly avoid the straight on deer caught in headlights kind of photos. Additionally, this changes the angle of light hitting your retinas which means good bye red-eye.
Turn up your ISO:
Turning up your ISO setting will allow you to capture more ambient light. Additionally, turning down your shutter speed will allow you to capture more ambient lighting too. Doing this will capture the atmosphere that you see with the naked eye (but your camera sees as pitch black). If all you have is a point-and-shoot camera, you can still capture nice ambient light. To avoid the pitch black background, just set your camera up to slow-sync flash (or nighttime shot mode). You will need to keep it really steady with a point and shoot camera though… set it on a book or counter top.
Zoom in for big beautiful background lights:
If you want that cool blurry background with big round lights… grab a lens that can give you the widest aperture (small f-stop number) and then zoom in as much as you can to your subject. As you zoom closer you get to your subject, you will create more separation between the subject and background. You will then see all the out of focus background lights bubble up and glow. This works great during Christmas time.
The photos above were all taken hand-held at night at the nearby community swimming pool. We used an off-camera main light in a softbox with a second rim light (bare speedlight) to the side and behind the subject. Hope you enjoy these photos and the quick tips. Let us know if you have any questions. One of these nights, we’re taking this to the city. Can you imagine the beautiful lights we’ll get downtown? =)
prettygeekyphotos
prettygeekyphot
I hope you take constructive criticism well??….=) But Kay looks washed out in the photos almost ghostly?? Kay is beautiful but the photos didn’t make me go WOW. Every photo you’ve tooken of Kay, I’ve loved and those made me go WOW but Idk these made me go bleh….but I do understand that these were taken at night so lighting wasn’t good. =)
Kay, don’t be a mega-b**** anymore because these pics are so gorgeous! That was a great find too. I love it!
damn kay u got some big boobies for such a tiny person! =P
I think Kay looks beautiful. I love the soft flowing hair :3
Also, I don’t think this is ‘bleh’ at all. I think the desaturated, bright look gives Kay an otherworldly look, which is never a bad thing to me :3
Thanks for the comments… for these photos we actually desaturated them on purpose (in post-production) =) I was going for that ethereal feel. Sometimes Kay will hate what I’ve done to a particular photo… sometimes I’ll hate what she did to another photo. But, this just all proves that everyone has their own flavor =). Please continue to give us feedback though, we love hearing it from you guys.
With the outfit, Kay looks like one of those BollyWood girls…except she’s prettier..hehehe. Always gorgeous!
Hi, it’s me again. How many flash heads did you use? Did you use an umbrella, or what did you use to diffuse the light? If you used a slow shutter speed, was your flash power lower and you turned up the aperture? Hmmm, I still can’t get a hang of it…but I haven’t done a night shot w/ my umbrella&flash.
@Gaochia
We used one SB-600 in a softbox (camera left) and one bare SB-600 speedlight for the rim-light effect behind the subject (camera right). Although we used a softbox an umbrella will work fine.. just make sure you secure it so the wind doesn’t knock it down. At night, you don’t need much flash power… so at most it was probably 1/2 power.
The best way to figure it out really is to try it. Adjust the shutter speed to see how it changes the photo, then adjust the aperture to see how it changes… then adjust the ISO to see how it effects the photo. Once you do it a few times, it will all just click. Good luck, let us know how it goes .. share some photos!