Photography Tip # 56: Taking Night Photos and Long Exposures

Greetings Fellow Photographers! We've all seen the beautiful photos of a city at night, with the shimmering skyscrapers full of activity, and the highways alive with beams of red and white light from blurred cars. But have you ever tried to take a shot like that? It can be tricky, especially without the right approach. But that's why I'm here! Read on for tips about shooting long exposure night shots...

Ready...
First thing's first: use a tripod! If you don't have a tripod, bring something you can use to secure the camera so it doesn't move. No matter how calm you are, you will not be able to hold your camera perfectly still long enough to capture the shot. Points of light are faint and dim at night; you need to use a long exposure to capture anything that is out of reach from the flash (about 10-20 feet). So turn the flash off. You can experiment but generally the flash does not help you with long exposure shots. Also, bring a flashlight to look at your camera settings in the dark.

Set...
Control your exposure with your shutter speed, which measures how long you expose the light sensor to the scene. It is better to use the shutter speed rather than the aperture setting because a wide aperture (such as f2.8) will shorten the depth of field. Lower your ISO to 200 to avoid background noise in the shot. Use a medium aperture like f8 or f5.6, and start with a 1 second shutter speed. Adjust only the shutter speed until you get the result you're after. Even the pros have to experiment when taking long exposure night shots, so you probably will too!

Shoot!
Use the self timer rather than pushing the button manually. This helps to avoid any shake caused by pushing the button, as the delay allows the camera to correct itself. Two seconds should be plenty of time on the self timer. Bracket the photos; once you find a setting that you think captures the shot perfectly, take a shot with the shutter speed slightly longer and then slightly shorter. The point is to shoot lots of different shots with different speeds to make sure you get the perfect one. Anything moving will be blurred, but the motion often adds to the shot, as is the case with moving cars on a highway.

Shooting Lightning
Getting the perfect lightning shot is like getting the perfect fireworks shot, which I talked about over the summer. Lightning photography is 90% luck and 10% skill, so open the shutter speed as long as possible and hope for a bolt! Aim the camera at the sky (on a tripod) where the most lightning activity is happening. Use a 10 second shutter speed and keep shooting in those increments. Try not to have any ambient light around you; otherwise the light may blow out the picture. Include some distant foreground to give a bit of depth to the shot. And remember that it is perfectly normal to take over 100 shots and only get 1 good one - this happens to all of us, so don't get discouraged!

Photo Project Ideas – Your Responses!
Thanks to everyone who answered last month's "Photo Project Ideas" question. I asked you all to submit success stories about any photo projects you have worked on using your online photo account. Here are two of my favorite answers:

Hey Digi,
On your recent request for ideas and stories of photo projects, I'd like to share mine! Last year we lost my dear Grandmother to cancer, she was everything to my family, the center of our lives really. She taught us all a lot about love and life. She was one of the strongest people I know, and I have several young cousins, she at some point taught all of us to drink coffee, and many times we shared a cup with her. While a death is an incredibly hard life fact to deal with, it was especially harder on those of us closest to her, my 5 year old cousin and myself. She cared for us daily. I tried to find ways for us to cope but we had our days; one day while viewing her pictures I came across the magic mug coffee cups, that hit me as the perfect idea. It would be a perfect gift for those in my family who regularly had coffee with her. I ordered a few with different photos of her and shared them with 3 of my aunts and the 5 year old cousin. It proved to be completely therapeutic for him. While it reminded him she is now gone and at peace she will always be available to have coffee with him, but she has to leave again when the coffee is gone. In a few weeks it will be a year and on those hardest days we all still have coffee with Grandma.

I am so grateful for the magic mug! That's my favorite photo project, thanks for listening!

Digi,
I photographed old photos to make digital files for my project. This is so much faster and better when working with a lot of material. I was making a slideshow of my husband's life for his 50th birthday. I wanted to include all of the events of his growing up to share with his family as well. I even took digital captures of photos from his yearbook. I highly recommend this approach as opposed to individual photo scanning when your project may contain 30 or more photos. My video is too long to send for your viewing pleasure (or boredom)!