In the night when all the streets become quiet and the low light makes the streets looks amazing, it is the best time for you to jump on with your weapon of photography. Night offers a dramatic range of light to shoot in. This is the time when you can you can experiment with your decisive street photography. Night Photography requires lots of practice and tons of knowledge about the rules of Photography. You have to have vast knowledge about the camera and settings and understand how you can capture the streets amazingly at night. Night time provides you with the trickiest situations you can have. Night Street Photography can help you get the most artistic pictures possible, only if you know the correct ways.
Street photography is itself really tough when you do it in the day time because of the people in the street. It is not that easy doing at the night either. You can get the sunlight in the day time but you may feel the lacking of the light in the night. Although the low lights on the street can also give some amazing photos. All the professional street or night photographer follow some tricks.
Here, we will be providing you will the top 12 Night Photography Techniques to help you master the art of Night Photography.
Select an Empty Street
People like to experiment with their photography. If you want to do experimental photography, night street photography would be the best. For that, you need to select an empty street or the time when the street remains empty. The advantage of shooting on an empty street is, you will not get bothered by anyone. You can shoot whatever you want to. No matter how long you take shots and how many, no one is there to see. Besides, you can take some great photos in an empty street. Experiment your street photography from every side. This would be an amazing experience you will have.
Arrive Early at the Location
Before going for a night street photography, observe some streets and select a street where you will find a lot of contents. Right after selecting your desired street, you have to set the time to go at the location for photography. It is not always about location, it is about the timing too. However, loads of Photographers hustle for the best spot to capture the best image. If you do not get a good spot, then you will most likely not get the best shot either. Thus, you need to reach the location early to ensure that you are getting a good view and you will get a good picture. If you go to the location early, you will get much time to shoot. So it is better to go to the location early and do set up and click night street photographs.
Shoot in Aperture Priority mode
Advancing as photographers, it is our duty to study the different modes of our cameras. Photographers mainly work with two modes: Aperture Priority (AP) and Manual. Basically in Aperture Priority mode, we can control everything in-camera, except for the shutter speed. Aperture Priority mode is great for the cityscape needs. This Night Photography technique will give you a sharper and cleaner image. Aperture mode also helps you to shoot running vehicles at night, It really looks beautiful when you capture the running vehicles using aperture priority mode.
Use Prime Lenses
During Night Street Photography, lighting plays a very important role. To catch a good light lenses matter a lot. There are many lenses which helps you to capture the light and fill the light in your photos. As you cannot get sun light during night, you have to get the light from other ways. Prime lens works best for capturing the light at night. As the prime lenses collect more light it also helps to achieve faster shutter speed.
Use a Tripod
While doing night street photography, one thing may go wrong which is the shakiness. For many photographers, the hands may get shaky while night street photography. Thus, the photographs may come shaken and hazy. One thing which can help you to avoid the shakiness is the Tripod. Tripod is a key tool to use when you got to shoot in various angles. Moreover, the importance of a sturdy Tripod cannot be neglected in such situations where you do not have the steadiest of platforms to shoot on. Tripod will help avoiding any vibrations and offer a big advantage in perfecting composition. It helps get good results in long exposure images.
Shooting Through Glass
Every photographer confronts the situation in which they have to shoot through glass, because we can get great angles and views from the tall buildings. It comes in the form of a challenge because it is not the easiest things to do, because the glass can be dirty, and can reflect interior light into your lens causing flares and softening the image. To overcome this, you can either use a dark cloth to place it around the camera, keeping the camera really close to the glass. Or you can buy specialist equipment for this. To neglect the dirt on the glass, you can use a simple Night Street Photography Technique- use a larger aperture. Try shooting at various apertures to completely remove the dirt from your image.
Shoot Details
While shooting night street photography, do not only click photographs of the streets. But look through the details surrounding the streets too. In the street there might be some more things to shoot such as lamp post, benches, wires, stalls, pattern of the foot-paths and many other details. Click the details using close-up to shoot. You will get some amazing night street photos by doing so.
Use Manual Focus
There are many ways of clicking night street photography. Many beginners are reliable on the auto focus to focus, and do not concentrate much on the manual focus. Focusing different subject while night street photography, will give you some great and exceptional photos. When you will see that the subject of your photo is focused and the background is blurred, it gives an exceptional look. I admit that the ability of focusing in auto-focus in cameras nowadays is incredible, but when you do not have to capture fast moving objects, then manual focus is the king. When light begins to fade, auto-focus can be really less effective, so using manual focus is undoubtedly the best.
Bracket Exposures
Cityscapes offer you with extremely wide and dynamic range of lights due to artificial lighting. This often creates a difference between the brightest and darkest parts. Your camera mostly does this mistake, making some parts really bright, while some parts really dark. You can use Bracket Exposures for that. To create a balanced image, it is necessary to take multiple exposures of the same scene. Single exposures can lead to under or over exposed areas. You can also check if your camera has an auto-bracketing function. This way the camera itself will do it for you.
Use Black and White Effect
One of the classic effects of photography is black and white effect. Nowadays even in HDR photography, the black and white effect is being used highly. During night street photography the quite streets looks different. To add one more different thing and to make the street photos look exceptional, black and white effect is being used. Many famous photographers use the black and white effect to their night street photographs to make the photos look luscious.
Keep Back-Up
It is obvious that street photography is done on the street but not at home. When you are outdoors, you do not have the facilities of charging your camera and other stuff. It is always better to have extra stuff with you that will be needed. Keeping extra batteries, memory card, and external flash can be really helpful when you are outdoors. This is a simple Night Street Photography technique that you can apply for your own help. So avoid the risk by keeping the back-ups with you.
Photo Editing
In this world of photography, raw photos can hardly make an impression. Photo editing is helping a lot to improve every kind of photographs. Post-processing plays a major role in transforming images into masterpiece. Editing can help you to delete all the imperfections in your image and enhance the beauty of the image. In fact there are many photo editing companies which are providing their amazing photo editing services. There are certain editing tools that can prove to be really useful when editing.
Conclusion
As a professional photographer, you all have to have the right techniques of doing photography. Night Street Photography is an art that can come in hand if you keep practicing. You won’t get a perfect scene instantly. You have to wait, and even go to the place for many days to get the perfect scenery. Once you can master this art, you can really get deep with it and create your own images with creative and unique ideas. These astonishing Night Photography Tips and Techniques will certainly help your reach a level of photography where you can feel proud of yourself. Try these tricks to be a professional.
