Night Photography Resource

Timing is everything. Knowing when the moon rises and sets helps you decide when you want to go out and take pictures, or what effect you'll get on any given day. Similarly, knowing with twilight occurs can also help you time your shots to achieve a certain look.

The US Naval Observatory has an online tool which produces a one year table of sun or moon rise and set times. All you need to do is enter in the coordinates of your location and it'll do all the math. I used to use this extensively, but looking up the coordinates for a location and typing them in is a bit of a pain.

After getting tried of struggling with coordinates, I created Sun or Moon Rise/Set Table for One Year a simplified interface to the US Naval Observatory's tool. Instead of manually keying in coordinates you can now pick your location from a map. Easy!

Now you can plan ahead by looking at the astronomical conditions and you can schedule your time accordingly to get the effect you want.

The colours and the curves! The colours really make this image special. The royal blue sky, chalky buildings, red and white lights from the cars, and occasional patches of green. These colours all blend together into a pleasing mess of light.

Unlike most pictures of headlights and taillights which are mostly straight lines, the hill and curving road turns the lights into big swooping curves. These fluid curves complement the straight lines of the paving stones and the buildings to add a variety of textures to the picture.

When taking pictures at night a flashlight is extraordinarily useful. You can use a flashlight to: light up the dials on your camera so you can change settings, light up your subject so you can focus the camera, do some light painting while you take the picture, and keep yourself from tripping over things in the dark.

What type of flashlight you bring is a matter of personal preference. I prefer a headlamp since it frees up my hands; however other people prefer large Maglites for the feeling of security that a large heavy flashlight can provide. I recommend looking for flashlight which is compatible with common battery sizes, can take coloured filters, has reasonable waterproofing, and is easily repairable.

One continuing challenge in night photography is balancing several different light sources, each with a totally different colour and intensity. This usually comes down to either luck or skill, and the picture above shows some serious skill.

This picture is impressive since the aurora, starlight and light from the town all blend and mess together in a pleasing way. Nothing overpowers anything else, and the aurora subtly steals the show. The composition is superb, with the aurora running perfectly between the houses and the truck on the right blocking some harsh lights. What a wonderful image of winter in the north.

Sometimes conditions and the limits imposed by cameras will force you to choose to use a high ISO speed. There is nothing wrong with a high ISO speed, but some people do not like the additional grain that this adds to their picture. Image stacking, a technique from astronomy, can help improve your high ISO pictures by reducing noise.

Overview

Noise in pictures appears as random specks of light superimposed over your picture. Since the contents of the picture are non-random (assuming you have no movement in your picture), you can take multiple pictures and then blend them together so the random noise is canceled out.

Why Use This Method?

There are several noise reduction programs and tools available which perform similar work on a single photograph. The main drawback to using the other tools is that they tend to cause blurring when they remove noise. This technique is preferable since it maintains the sharpness of the original photograph.

How to

1. Using a tripod, take a series of pictures of the same scene using the same settings
2. Import the pictures into your favorite image editing program, each as a separate layer
3. Set the opacity of the bottom layer to 100%, the next lowest layer to 50%, the next lowest layer to 25% and so forth; halving the opacity for each subsequent layer
4. Flatten the image into a single layer and save normally

Examples

On the left is a picture taken at a high ISO speed without any compensation, and on the right is a composite made from stacking six high ISO speed pictures together. Notice that the picture on the right has reduced grain but still maintains its sharpness.

This image stands out from a combination of light sources (city lights and ambient light), a short focal length and a long shutter speed adding a slight bit of motion blur. The main subject matter is the boy standing in the foreground; however, the entire image is very pleasing to behold.

Note: The BBC has expressed interest in terminating the h2g2 website. In case this goes forward, here is a preserved copy of the h2g2 article on night photography.

Contrary to popular belief, the most difficult aspect of night photography is actually removing yourself from the sofa and going outside, especially as many of the best shots are to be had on the colder or wetter nights.

Clear skies may provide you with a nice moody moonlit scene, but the sofa will probably be much warmer. A spot of rain can bring concrete and tarmac to life with reflections from shop windows, neon signs, traffic lights and street-lamps, but also makes that sofa all the more inviting. But unless you are heavily into pictures of your sofa at night you are going to have to be brave, wrap up warm and venture outside.

This picture really stands out for a number of reasons. The obvious things you notice are the excellent composition and unique colour cast provided by the film, but the subtle effect provided by the narrow depth of field also adds a lot of depth to the picture. The overall effect is that even if you give the picture a brief glance you tend to draw in and engage with the picture.

If you are looking to take some clear shots of the stars in the night sky, the best time to try is in the winter or on cold nights.

One element that distorts pictures of the sky is moisture. While this at it's most dramatic this moisture takes the form of clouds, there is some degree of moisture in the sky all the time. The capability of the air to hold moisture is dependent on temperature, so warm air holds more moisture than cold air.

The clearest pictures are available on the coldest nights since the air lacks the capacity to hold much moisture, so starlight passes through the atmosphere with very little distortion when it is cold out.

A while back I discovered the photography of Rune Guneriussen. Rune takes pictures of lamps out in the middle of the forest and the results are simply stunning.

I wish I could take pictures like these. A while ago my late friend Mikael and I had the idea of hauling a television, couch, side table and lamp all over the province taking pictures of them in strange places. This is very similar in feel and spirit. I'm wondering what he did for power and how he managed to transport so many lamps around.