Let’s talk about shooting when there is no light. Really, plenty of light is often available; it just takes a while to get enough of it to make a photograph. There are special challenges in photographing low-light situations, and the long shutter speed is just one of them. This article explores ways to achieve the best exposures when the light is low or seems to be missing completely. We’ll be using examples ranging from landscapes and sunset scenes to cities and fireworks!

1. Your Best Friend, the Tripod

Although not all low-light photographs are made while using a tripod, most of them are. In order to get the best results — meaning steady, sharp and solid images — a tripod must be used. Tripods need not be expensive, but they should be sturdy enough to hold the camera still in a slight breeze. With the size of digital cameras getting smaller and smaller, this is ever more important as the camera’s weight might not help to hold the tripod still.

A couple of additional things help keep the camera
from blurring. The first thing is making sure
that all of the leg extensions are nice and tight. If
your tripod uses a twisting type lock, then make
sure that you twist it sufficiently. If it has one of
the many kinds of lever style locks for the legs,
keep the nuts and bolts properly tensioned so that
the tripod stays upright and solid even when there
is some weight placed on it. Most tripods even
come with the proper sized little wrench to keep
everything tight. Keep that wrench in your camera
bag, and when you are waiting for a sunset or
the like, take a minute to tighten your tripod.

Getting some additional weight on the tripod
also helps to keep it rock solid. Some professional
photographers may go as far as hanging a sandbag
or two from the tripod in order to keep everything
still. Sandbags may be overkill for most, but
hanging your camera bag from the tripod to
weight it down does the same thing, without
requiring a bunch of sandbags.

Using the strongest tripod in the world is all for
nothing if your hand moves the camera every
time you touch the shutter release. Almost every
digital camera has some sort of socket for a cable
release or remote trigger. At a pinch, you can also
use the camera’s self-timer in place of a cable
release. If you set it to longer, it actually may
mean less vibration on the camera than a cable
release. Some of the more advanced digital cameras
even have the option of locking the mirror
in the up position before firing the shutter to
eliminate all vibration. For extreme critical
sharpness, the mirror-up function can be vital.

2. Capturing Skylines

When photographing cities at night, you might
be amazed at the brightness of the city lights,
how they affect the meter, and just how much
light the camera is able to pick up. In most cases
at night to get the appropriate level of darkness
in a scene, you need to underexpose at least
slightly.

By using an exposure of 8 seconds
at f/8 at ISO 100, the skyline is very distinct against this
sky, which is just beginning to see some morning color.

When shooting a city at
night, though, with the brightness of the headlights,
the streetlights, and the lights from the
buildings, you may even be able to just use the
straight meter reading and one of the auto modes.

Using the automatic modes and the exposure
compensation might actually be better than using
manual as a learning tool for people who are still
working on mastering exposure. That may seem
counter intuitive, but unless you are someone
who writes down what the meter reading said and
then what the manual exposure was, there is no
way to determine exactly how you worked with
or against the meter reading when you go to looking
at the camera data. When you set the camera
up in manual mode, it only records the exposure
data; it doesn’t tell you what the meter said. In
Aperture Priority, for example, when you see the
exposure data plus the exposure compensation,
you know exactly what the exposure was compared
to what the meter was telling you to do.

Mastering your exposures by looking at the camera
data in Photoshop Elements or Bridge works
only if you actually look at and compare the photograph
and determine what works and what
doesn’t.

Because of the brightness of the city lights, there
are two times of day when shooting the sky seems
to work best — when it is cloudy and after dusk,
or way before dawn. The reason that those times
are better is because being able to actually see
some texture and color in the sky goes a long way
toward separating the buildings from the sky. If
you shoot very early or quite late after sunset,
while there is a tiny bit of light still in the sky, it
will still be apparent that you are photographing
at night, but the sky tells a better story. Shooting
when it is very cloudy also makes for an interesting
sky because of the light pollution. The glow
of the city lights reflecting back from the city creates
an eerie glow in the sky, and it makes something
more of the sky than having it just go
black, as in this photo.

Not only does the stormy weather
put texture in the sky, but the wetness on the surfaces also
increases the richness and reflections and color on the ground.
The exposure here was 1.5 seconds at f/5.6 at ISO 200.

Even when there is just a small bit of texture in
the sky, it is still better than just all
black.

The exposure here was
6 seconds at f/7.1 at ISO 125 with
exposure compensation set at –1. The small
bit of sky still adds quite a bit to the
skyline, and setting the white balance to
tungsten works to make the scene look clean.

Just like shooting a landscape in the day,
attempting to put something in the sky to give it
drama and dimension is exactly the same when
the sun is shining elsewhere. Compositionally,
shooting skylines at night and landscapes is similar.
Placing something in the foreground for
emphasis and scale makes for a more interesting
photograph.

Some might ask, why can’t you see the stars with
such long exposures? The answer is that the city
lights still provide a massive amount of light as
compared to the small amount of light that the
sun puts out. The exposures simply aren’t long
enough to capture the starlight, and if they were,
the city exposure would be totally washed out.

3. Taking Photos at Dusk

When just a tiny bit of sunlight is available, using
a spot meter is important to get the right exposure
of the small patches of sunlight.

Getting the spot meter reading on the
tiny bit of sunlight nails the exposure. Still a lot of sun is hitting that
tiny spot as the exposure here is 1/180 second at f/7.1 at ISO 200.

Using the other metering functions can make for
a very washed out looking image as the averaging
meters average all that dark with the small
amount of bright. To get the correct exposure
using a center-weighted or evaluative meter, you
need to use some underexposure, either manually
or with the exposure compensation.

When shooting a more urban shot, you have a lot
of city lights, and the color is great at dusk
because the ambient light is still there to give
some definition to the buildings, but you can still
see the man-made lighting scheme. This time is a
favorite for a lot of architectural photographers
and people who are trying to balance the light of
the scene and the light of the sky. Sunsets are
often hastened by inclement weather as the light
gets lower much sooner.

Usually, the camera can’t deal
with the disparity in light indoors and light outside.
For short periods of time, those lights can be balanced,
usually at dusk. This image is exposed at 1/13 second at f/4 at ISO 200.

This may be an advantage in shooting because the sunset will
stay much the same for a longer period of time
instead of going rapidly from bright daylight to
dark nighttime.

4. Shooting in the Afterglow

Often, quite a bit of light is still left in the sky
long after the sunlight has left the scene. This
time is called the afterglow and is still a great time
to shoot some low-light shots. Many times this
light comes from the glow of the reflected light
coming off of the still lit clouds. Many times the
light in the afterglow has its own light quality. It
is not hard, yet there are rich shadows, and it is
not soft light, but the tones definitely have a soft
texture. In this photo, the sky is blue, and there is definition
in the clouds, but the light hitting the balanced
rock is still very directional, even though
the sun has been below the horizon for a while.

By comparing a sunset chart
and the camera data with the
image file, this image was taken
about 20 minutes after the sunset.
The exposure was 4 seconds
at f/8 at ISO 200.

There isn’t really a name for the time long before
the sunrise, but this pre-sunrise is very much like
the light of the afterglow. Earlier in the day, when
almost no light is in the sky, the reflections of the
city lights almost perfectly balance the light in
the sky. To just look at the scene might make the
scene appear far too dark, but letting enough
light into the camera with a long shutter speed
can cause the scene to be bright and rich with
color. Long exposures not only let in a lot of
light, but because the sensor is on for so long,
they can also create additional noise in the
image. If you are going to all the trouble of shooting
long exposures, make sure that your ISO is as low
as possible.

Shooting water at dawn and dusk can also make
for exceptional lighting. Much like shooting a
creek or river, shooting long exposures of waves
moving across a body of water adds a slight glow
and smoothness to the water. The water is constantly
moving, and the little white caps and the
reflections off of the water are constantly moving
and oscillating; yet, because of the low light level
and small aperture any whites are muted and just
add to the softness of the water, as in picture.

This image was taken at an
exposure of 30 seconds at f/4 at ISO 100. The city
lights give the pilings enough of an amber glow, complementing
the blue of the lake long before the sun rises.

It is also possible to shoot a scene when the afterglow
has almost totally faded and the scene is lit
with just a small bit of ambient light still in the
sky and the light of a full moon. This necessitates
long shutter speeds and large apertures to get
enough light into the camera. Shooting during
the twilight can actually create a scene that still
appears to be nearly daylight.

Nearly after the sunset, and
probably two hours after this valley dropped into shadow,
using an exposure of 30 seconds at f/8 at ISO 100 the
scene is almost indistinguishable from a daylight scene.

5. Sunsets and Silhouettes

In most cases, shooting a sunset and silhouettes
actually entails shortening the exposure. When
shooting in low light, it usually is a low contrast,
such as the above photo. That long exposure was with the
light hitting the scene matching the light coming
from the sky. When shooting more toward the
sunset and with the sky still bright, a silhouette is
created when underexposing the scene, making
the shadows darker.

Some digital cameras actually have silhouette settings.
Silhouettes can easily be created by getting
a meter reading off of the brightest part of the
scene and then setting your exposure from there,
and in many cases, underexposing from that
bright part. When shooting a sunset, or dusk
scene, the brightest area of the scene is the sky
and it easily creates a silhouette of objects
placed in the foreground.

Although being able to
see all of the detail in this scene would make for an
exposure of several seconds, shooting at 1/20 second
at f/11 at ISO 200 creates a very dynamic silhouette.

Even in just slightly diminished light, the
opportunity for a silhouette is there by using
the contrast of the scene. Getting low and getting
any sort of dark object against a brighter subject
and then underexposing the scene makes a silhouette.
This can even be done with moonlight
hitting the clouds. One very interesting thing to
do is to work with your white balance to force a
particular feel into the scene. In this photo, setting
the white balance to tungsten outside on a
gloomy dark day makes an already blue feeling
scene to look blue literally.

Setting the white balance to incandescent
adds blue to the scene, and when underexposing at 1/60 second
at f/11 at ISO 200, a very moody and dark silhouette scene is made.

Sunsets are not necessarily considered true low-light
situations, but when shooting sunsets and silhouettes,
you are essentially shooting layers of
shadows. Unlike a scene in which the sun’s light is
virtually gone, ample contrast exists to maximize
the levels of the shadows, especially when the
scene is backlit. When shooting into the end of
the sunset, the layers of the background become
ever more apparent, such as the mountains and
trees in this photo.

The last light of the day makes a silhouette
of the Joshua tree and layers of mountains in the background.
The exposure here was 1/125 sec, at f/2.8 with ISO 200.

6. Creating Soft, Moody Light with Low Light

Softness in a photograph can come from the light
source itself, the subject, or the atmospheric conditions
of the scene. Atmospheric conditions
would be fog, haze, or smoke. The material in the
air diffuses the light and the contrast of the scene
and gives the light something to reflect off,
creating rays of light in the haze wherever there is
a direct light source. Most notably, this happens
when the sunlight filters through lifting fog. This
effect is also seen in various movies and television programmes
where there are flashlights. In this photo, all of the
light comes from the light of the firemen’s
flashlights cutting through the smoke and the
haze. Not only does this make the actual light
rays more visible, but it also broadens it out.

Beams of light make for dramatic lines
within the image as the flashlights shine through the smoke. The exposure
here is set at 1/6 second at f/4.5 at ISO 1600. Photo by Jarod Trow.

Sometimes, the subject and the light combine to
make a photograph very soft. Anytime that a
light source is diffused – a lamp shade, an
umbrella, a soft box, a translucent reflector, or
even fingers over a flashlight – the light becomes
softer as the rays of light spread out, bounce around and reflect against the diffuser.

This means much of the light is lost, and only a little is active in creating the exposure. Having
such a small light or low level of light usually
makes for a dark scene. There just isn’t enough
light to brighten anything, but just because the
scene is dark, that doesn’t mean that the scene
has a lot of contrast. No real highlights are on the
face of the girl in this photo, and the shadows there
are very soft and diffused.

It doesn’t even matter what the source of
this light is, because it is so small and soft, all you really see is the softness
of the light on the little girl’s face. The exposure here is 1 second at
f/2.8 at ISO 400. Photo by Holly Jordan.

7. Taking Advantage of Additional Light Sources

Low-light images are often made even better with
the addition of some sort of light to help build interest or
emphasis in the image. This additional light can
take the form of a strobe or incandescent, or the
light can be from more esoteric sources like headlights
from a car, or a sparkler.

This is a common and easy
way of using additional light sources to put
emphasis on a subject in a low-light scene. When
the light gets very low, the strobe makes up the
bulk of the light for the subject, but to get the low
lights in the background to expose, a longer
shutter speed needs to be used. When a slow shutter
speed is used in conjunction with a flash to
make the image, it is called slow-sync or dragging
the shutter. In this photo, the camera is set on a tripod
to maintain sharpness with the slow shutter speed.

Using a slow sync, the flash fires at a shutter speed of 1/20 second which lets the background
lights burn in while the flash perfectly exposes the subject. The exposure here is 1/20 second at f/2.8 at ISO 200.

Flash can be used to augment even a distant
low-light scene by adding some light in a place
where there otherwise may be just darkness or a
silhouette. Shooting long exposures often means
that aperture is also small, letting very little
light in. By taking a strobe unit off the top of the
camera, you can angle the light so it provides more of a “crosslight”. With a long exposure,
you also don’t even need a sync cord or
wireless trigger; you can just fire the strobe manually
with the test button. If the aperture is so
small (high number f-stop), it may take several
hits with the flash to build up much of an exposure.
Using the strobe like this makes for a much
more subtle effect, as seen in the photo.

With the camera locked on the
tripod and a very long exposure, firing the strobe manually
four or five times gives the rocks just a little bit of definition.
The exposure was 25 seconds at f/100 at ISO 100.

8. Using Rear Sync in Low Light Images

Rear sync, or second curtain sync, refer to the firing of the
strobe at the end of the exposure instead of the
beginning of it. What happens is that the first
blade of the shutter opens to begin the exposure,
light builds on the sensor creating the exposure,
and just before the second blade comes down to
end the exposure, the strobe goes off. This does
two things: It freezes the subject at the end of
movement and gives the subject a trailing blur as
some of the exposure is behind a moving object.

One great thing about using rear
curtain strobe in a low-light situation is that you
can also use the lights as a design element within
the image. A long exposure creates time to move
the camera and zoom the lens during the exposure,
and with the rear curtain sync, the subject
still is properly exposed and frozen by the strobe.
Zooming the lens during the exposure makes the
lights into trailing light rays or beams.
This is an effect that can add a little life to
an image that otherwise may be a little bit staid,
but it should be used judiciously.

Zooming the lens during the exposure is
something you can do only with a long exposure. This exposure is set at
1/5 sec. at f/4.5 at ISO 800. The high ISO helps the background lights
stay bright.

One thing about strobes in general is that because
the light happens so fast, the flash of light freezes
the motion in the image. This is particularly
important when the action is happening quickly.
Using this ability with the rear sync can make for
very dynamic images. When the scene has some
light, it helps to register the fast-moving object,
and when there are lights on the subject,
such as a car with all its lights on, the
trails behind the subject add a lot to the effect.

Sometimes being off of the tripod helps, too.
The exposure here is 1/4 second at f/2.8 at ISO 400, and with the inconsistency
in panning, the lights in the background appear as wavy racing stripes.

9. Matching Long Exposures With Flash

The second thing that rear curtain sync does is
to fill in the amount of light that the exposure
needs after the long exposure. For shooting
static subjects, using rear curtain sync really helps
to better balance the light of the long exposure
with the strobe because the computer and the
meter have already figured out how much light
was required for the exposure; the computer adds
enough strobe to finish the exposure.

Using the rear curtain sync made the strobe fire
just enough light into the tree to give it a nice glow without overpowering the
light on the rocks. The exposure here was 1/30 second at f/8 at ISO 100.

When the light is just right, regular strobes don’t
even need to be used. Although this section is
about flash, think about different kinds of
flash…like the flashers on your vehicle. In a 30-
second exposure, how many times might those
lights flash, each time building up some exposure
on the sensor, even though they might barely register
in your brain? See this.

The exposure here was set in
order to capture the cliff face in
the background. The car lights
hitting the trees were a total
bonus. The exposure was 30
seconds at f/4.8 at ISO 200 with
exposure compensation at +1.

Even the flash on a compact digital can help to
liven up a scene by forcing the flash to fire. In a
landscape scenario, the flash on a compact digital
just does not put out that much light, but when a
subject is in shadow and there is still a bit of glow
after the sunset hitting the rest of the landscape,
it can make more of the scene than just a silhouette.
Using the flash to brighten the bush in
this image helps to separate it as the subject from the
far away arch and overall adds balance by bringing
a stronger subject to work with the strength
of the arches.

To make sure the colors would
stay rich and not wash out, the
exposure compensation was
set to 1/100 second at f/2.8 at
ISO 100. The flash puts out just
what is needed to balance the
exposure with the background.

10. Capturing the Motion of Lights

You can make light move through a photograph
in so many ways that it is hard to just focus on a
few. Cityscapes are really great places to look at
the lights and work with many different types and
colors of light. Unlike a straight landscape,
though, by placing the lights from moving cars
somehow in the scene, the lights of the cars add a
huge sense of frenzy and activity in the place.
Even the motion of the leaves in the
sky helps to increase the layers and add to the
dynamic feel of a city.

After you stake out your scene, make sure
it is at angle to capture the movement of the lights through the scene.
The exposure for this image is 4 seconds at f/14 at ISO 200.

Use the longest shutter speed that you can, but
try not to have an aperture smaller than f/16 or
so. The smaller the aperture, the darker the lights
of the cars will be. This might be okay if there is
substantial traffic, because the lights from the
headlights will build up exposure. If there are
only a few vehicles, then stay with the wider
apertures. On the other hand, if the shot shows
cars leaving, and you see more taillights, you may
need even faster aperture as taillights are far dimmer
than headlights.

Sparklers burn very hot, and at the core, the light
of a sparkler is very bright, but it takes a long
exposure to get all trails of all the sparks at they
come off of the stick. Using a long exposure, you
can get a feel for the excitement that kids get
when they first light sparklers, seeing the long
trails jumping out from the sparkler and falling to
the ground.

Sparklers need long exposures, but they
do burn hot, so it is possible to use a reasonable aperture. The exposure
here was 4 seconds at f/7.6 at ISO 100. Photo by Holly Jordan.

11. Faster Lenses?

Photographers often throw out the terms “fast lenses” or “faster apertures”.
This refers to the fact that some lenses have different maximum apertures, allowing for
different shutter speeds at a given light level. For example, the zoom that comes with a digital
SLR almost certainly has a maximum aperture of f/3.5 or f/4 at the wide setting of the zoom,
and f/4.5 or f/5.6 at the telephoto end. A more professional zoom lens has a maximum aperture
of f/2.8 all the way through the zoom range. The lens with the maximum aperture is
called a faster lens because it allows for a faster shutter speed at the same given amount of
light when the aperture is wide open.

12. Long Exposures for Firework Celebrations

Shooting fireworks is it’s own art form, posing several
challenges. It is difficult to begin with because
you have to set up the camera in the dark; you
also have to focus on a black sky and try to get an
exposure while the camera is pointed at that
black sky. The challenges never end! So here are
five rules of thumb for shooting fireworks:

• Rule 1 — Set the camera to f/8 or f/11. Use
  f/8 if you want to see some color in the sky,
  and the light show is relatively small. Use f/11
  if you want more of a black sky, and the fireworks
  are at a major celebration, like the
  Independence Day Fireworks in Boston or
  Washington, D.C. Bigger cities simply have
  bigger and brighter fireworks.
• Rule 2 — Set the rest of your exposure correctly.
  Use ISO 100. Your aperture and the
  ISO are making the entire exposure.
• Rule 3 — Set the shutter to B, bulb, or
  time. Choose the setting on your camera that
  allows you to open and close the shutter at
  your desire.
• Rule 4 — Put your camera on a tripod and
  use a cable release. These two items are
  intertwined, so they count as one rule! A
  cable release is not absolutely necessary, but it
  is very hard to photograph fireworks successfully
  without one.
• Rule 5 — Set the camera’s focus manually.
  A switch somewhere on your camera or the
  lens allows you to manually focus and leave it
  there. You can probably just look at the lens
  barrel and set the focus to infinity. After your
  first exposure, check the focus on the LCD
  screen. Most digital cameras have the function
  to zoom into your image and check critical
  focus. Use it on the first one so that all
  the rest of your shots are in focus.

Once you’ve done these five items, watch and
listen for the launch of the fireworks. A certain
pace will start to evolve as the show proceeds.
You can open the shutter before the launch
because there is little to nothing in the sky to
create an exposure until the shell is launched
and explodes. Keep the shutter open until it has
burned out to get the full effect of each shell.
This may be difficult during the finale. Shooting
more than one explosion at a time often results
in overexposure as the light just builds up on the
sensor.

Keeping some part of the environment in the
scene helps to define the photo and gives it further
definition, scale, and sense of place.
Whether it is a local park with your neighbors or
the Brooklyn Bridge in the scene, shoot at least a
few with some elements of the environment.

Keeping the shutter open for the entire
burst is important; otherwise, you can’t fully capture the shape of the
burst. The exposure of this image is 8.4 seconds at f/8 at ISO 100.

Now for more abstract fireworks shots, don’t hesitate
to break any and all of those rules of thumb.
For example, try breaking Rule 4 — and handhold
your camera. Try to time the bursts, but
otherwise you can create some really interesting
shots by just trying different things.

This is a handheld fireworks shot, and it
has such a cool feel to it. The exposure is 4 seconds at f/7.6 at ISO 100.

Carnivals and fairs are also very interesting places
to capture the motion of lights. Shooting carnivals
and the like is very similar to shooting fireworks,
but because the lights on rides are so much
brighter and more repetitious, you probably need
to stop down some more. In case you want to
experiment a little, you might start with checking
on an exposure using the evaluative meter with
Aperture Priority and the exposure compensation
set to –2/3.

The biggest thing you want to look for in shooting
rides is to capture the sense of motion. In
order to do this, try to get the longest shutter
speed possible. After you have your exposure set
up with a long shutter and small aperture, the
biggest problem is waiting for the rides to start
and stop and trying to get multiple rises going at
the same time

Getting all three of the rides
going at the same time was quite a lengthy process. The
exposure was set in manual at 13 seconds at f/22 at ISO 100.

To help increase the feel of motion, tension,
and activity, try tilting the camera slightly.
When doing it slightly, it needs to be enough
that it looks purposeful, 10–15 degrees or more;
otherwise, if it is too slight of an angle, it just
looks like you made a mistake. This can also
help to fill the frame with light better when
other things are happening with the light in
the scene, such as the blur of the people at the
bottom of this photo.

The texture of the Zipper is very
interesting with all of the tiny
lines of light, both in circles and
in wavy lines. The exposure
here was 10 seconds at f/16 at
ISO 100.

13. Have Fun!

Most importantly, have fun experimenting with night photography. It poses a unique set of challenges, but the opportunity is there to take some stunning photographs. Feel free to share links to your favourites in the comments!