Night photography

Night photography is a newly discovered part of photography for me. Usually you'll see be told that the golden hour or the blue hour are the best to shoot. While this are very nice hours to shoot light wise, night photography has a place of its own.

Night photography starts about one hour after the sun has set.. so no blue hour. Does this mean it's dark out there.. yes and no. The world is not half as dark as you think at night. Especially in Belgium, with all our artificial lights out there.

And this is where it gets interesting.. the moon, the stars and all the artificial lights create a wonderful and colorful combination.

Let me start with the moon.. it is in essence reflected sun-light, so while it might look very 'white' it does have some warm qualities to it. So when you shoot with long closure times, the world will not look blueish cold when the moon is out, but nicely warm.

The stars are specks in the sky, which due to longer exposure times become lines on your shot. The earth is constantly turning and this is where it shows.

The artificial lights in Belgium are mostly orange-tinted. This is reflected at night on the clouds above us. So in reality you might see a slight tint to the clouds in the sky (if you look closely). In your shot, you'll see a very definite orange influence on your sky, mostly due to the cumulative effect of the orange tint during long exposure times.
If you go to industrial sights, you'll see lots of differently coloured lights. It's up to you to decide how you want to play with them, since as of yet, i haven't done this. I like landscapes in the night.

A good example of the orange tinting in the sky is this one:



The next one was shot when the moon was out (so you do see shadow). Again the orange tinting did not come from sunset, but from a city which is illuminated at night.



The next one is without a moon, but completely illuminated by the lights of a nearby highway. in the back one can see the lights of one of the roads leading away from the highway. And yes this are once again the 'normal' colours you can get at night.



I'm planning on doing a bit more of this night photography because of all the challenges it poses. It relies a lot more on your own feeling of doing things. You can hit it just right or dreadfully wrong and when they take 20 min or more to take, it can be a one of a time shot you just missed.. *grin*