How Everyone Can Do Night Photography, From Beginner to Pro

Night photography isn't all about astrophotography and in fact, there are a lot of great shots out there waiting to be captured. In this video, see how night images of varying difficulties are made and use them as inspiration for your own shoots.

When people think of photography at night, they typically jump straight to astrophotography. That's understandable, it's the most common thing to do in low-light and the results can be beautiful. I have loved astrophotography since before I picked up my first dedicated camera, but there are some barriers of entry. Firstly, you need a fast and wide lens to capture the stars without getting trails or without them being too dim. Secondly, you need to live somewhere dark and with low light pollution. If you don't, you'll need to travel to capture celestial bodies and the Milky Way. But, astrophotography isn't the only type of night photography.

If you ask any professional landscape photographer, they'll likely give you a piece of advice I've heard many times over the years and it's certainly worth listening to: don't stop shooting the second the sun goes down, stay for blue hour. Blue hour is that hour or so after the sun is gone where you lose the orange light and are instead bathed in blue light. This extends further than you might realize too, as with the use of long exposures, your camera can pick up light the human eye cannot. This can lead to some beautiful images and it's a type of photography that's underused.

In this video, watch different shots created after the sun sets, from simple long exposures at blue hour, to complicated shots later at night using drones to light the foreground interest.

Rob Baggs's picture

Robert K Baggs is a professional portrait and commercial photographer, educator, and consultant from England. Robert has a First-Class degree in Philosophy and a Master's by Research. In 2015 Robert's work on plagiarism in photography was published as part of several universities' photography degree syllabuses.

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