Dark Photography School

Sooner or later, you are going to run in to lens flare when doing urban night photography. Frequently you will want to capture a building, fixture, or other item that is inconveniently located near a street light. While there are ways to control it, it usually isn’t possible to eliminate it altogether, depending on how close you are to the light source and how much of it is in the composition.

EXIF: 100 ISO, 30 sec., f/13, 17mm focal length, flash off

EXIF: 400 ISO, 0.7 sec., f/4, 17mm focal length, flash off

The first photo illustrates a case of very bad flare. It was a very long exposure, which meant the very small aperture. A small aperture will focus light as it goes toward the sensor from the lens, and will cause the light ray to bounce around within the camera. This causes multiple flares, sometimes in different colors and usually in the shape of a hexagon. This hexogonal shape is the result of the lens diaphram. The number of sides in the polygon is determined by the number of blades in the diaphragm itself.
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Introduction to the rule of thirds

Symmetry plays one of the most important roles in determining the aesthetic quality of a photograph. As a rule, you generally want to avoid placing the subject of the photograph dead in the center of it. For some reason, we prefer edges and lines that appear in thirds rather than halves. That is to say that you the want focal point (subject) to be either on the right or left, 1/3 or 2/3 of the distance from the edge. Likewise for horizontal lines. This is known as the rule of thirds, as illlustrated by the crude drawing below:

Exceptions to the rule

There are exceptions to the rule of thirds, and one of these examples is the (appearance of) the convergence of paralllel lines. The point at which parallel lines appear to meet is known as a vanishing point. Frequently, you will be dealing with imaginary vanishing points because the parallel lines will stop before they actually meet. Regardless of whether or not they appear to meet, a good way to create a striking photo is to center that point.

Imaginary vanishing points

When you are dealing with imaginary vanishing points (the lines end before they appear to meet), you want to make sure there is at least something that draws the eyes where the point would be. A good focal point for this scenario would be people. By leaving the shutter speed slower than 1/10 of a second, I was able to blur them while in movement.

EXIF: 800 ISO, 1/4 sec., f/4, 35mm focal length, flash off
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One of the greatest secrets of creative night photography is not a long exposure, but a longer one. This is what I refer to as the sweet spot exposure because it’s a small range of exposure times–typically longer than 1/10 of a second but shorter than 1 second. The reason this is such a great range is that it typically creates movement and blur, but not so much so that only light trails are seen. I’ve written articles on this before, such as freezing people in movement and combining flash and slow shutter speed.

EXIF: 100 ISO, 1/2 sec., f/9.5, 17mm focal length, flash off

In the photo above, leaving the shutter open for half a second allowed a good bit of the red-colored bus to be shown, but also blurred. This length also allowed the people behind the bus to be partially exposed as well.
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Conventional wisdom says that when rain is here, you stay inside. There is good reason to avoid rain–any amount of water in the electronics of your camera can magically turn it in to a doorstop or paperweight.
With the proper preparation and care, however, you can get some great and not-so-usual photos that take advantage of the unique properties of light and water refraction.

EXIF: 1600 ISO, 0.7 sec., f/4.5, 40mm focal length, flash off

When it is raining, misty, drizzling, or otherwise precipitous outside, light refracts off of the water in the air, creating a soft glow on everything that is illuminated.

EXIF: 1600 ISO, 1/4 sec., f/4.0, 17mm focal length, flash off

In my opinion, the best part of photography in the rain is not the refractive effect, but the reflective effect. When pavement becomes soaked, it acts as a weak mirror to light sources around it. The photo above is an example of the reflective properties of water. The lights in the photo above are more noticable on the reflection source than they are at the light source itself.

EXIF: 400 ISO, 6 sec., f/5.6, 17mm focal length, flash off

An example of refraction and reflection acting together is from another source you may not think about–the sky. Clouds bringing the rain will reflect light back down towards earth (making the sky visible) in addition to projecting a soft, dark glow (from the moon, perhaps?). If you shoot in the city, stars in the sky are hard to come by. However, you can get an interesting looking sky when there are clouds overheard and a mist in the air.

EXIF: 1600 ISO, 1/20 sec., f/4.5, 22mm focal length, flash off

The last idea I’ll convey about rain is capturing people. Think about the last time you were at the grocery store during a downpour. How many people did you see slowly moseying about towards their car? Chances are you saw people running, hopping, or jumping quickly over water puddles. When it rains out, you get a chance to capture people unlike they are in most situations. When shooting at a wide angle, set your shutter to 1/4 second or faster. At this speed you will capture them in some form–probably blurred. The faster the shutter speed you use, the more clear the images will be of the person in motion.

How can you keep your gear safe while capturing life out in the rain? It isn’t easy, I’ll admit. I usually go out driving in the rain, and wait for a lull in the action to get out of my car and get a few shots. It may be possible to set up your tripod in the car, but it will be cumbersome and you will be severely limited in the shots you can get. Your best bet is to carry an umbrella, and look for overhangs and awnings. Getting a few drops of water on your lens or camera body won’t spell certain doom. I’ve been caught out in torrential downpours on many occasions with nothing to protect my camera with. The amount of leeway you have is determined by the environmental protections offered to you by the camera manufacturer. Lower end DSLRs will have less weather protection than the higher end ones. If most of your camera is wet from rainfall, you want to avoid further contact with water and either protect your gear or wait for a slowdown in the rain.
Like so many other things in life, the most rewarding actions carry a proportional amount of risk. Small amounts of water = okay. A drenched camera = damaged electronics beyond repair.

Under ideal conditions you want a tripod, but in many instances there isn’t enough room to lug one around. A monopod is another option, but even that can be problematic in large crowds. Many venues/bands simply won’t allow flash photography as it’s distracting, especially with many of them going off. Your only option: handholding in what is normally very low light conditions.

Please note: not every concert is the same. All venues are slightly different, and all shows have different properties with regards to lighting, effects, etc. This article tries to make some generalizations, but obviously some of the advice presented here can be adjusted according to the situation. In many cases it’s an unknown with regard to what the club or venue will allow you to carry in, what the lighting will be, and how crowded it may be.

Lenses

Do you have a 50mm f/1.8 lens in your arsenal? If not, it should be your next purchase. They are made by both Nikon and Canon (and I assume others) and as far as lenses go, very inexpensive. I bought mine brand new at a local camera shop for $90. Having an aperture of f/1.8 really opens the possibilities. If you don’t have a “nifty fifty”, you want to bring your widest-angle lens. Having a wide angle lens makes it easier to photograph in low light, as more ambient light is caught by the sensor, requiring a shorter exposure time. A telephoto in low light conditions with no flash or tripod is pretty much out of the question, unless it’s outdoors during the day. I am also making the assumption that you have a digital SLR camera.
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EXIF: 800 ISO, 20 sec., f/13, 17mm focal length, flash off

In this lesson we are going to explore how you can use lighting in places such as pubs and restaurants to create a very colorful and vivid photograph by overexposing it.
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In my previous article I discussed ways you can create light trails by rocking the camera on the tripod when the shutter is open. Almost as an afterthought I mentioned that

If you’d like to get especially adventuresome, you could combine zoom with tilting the camera while the shutter is open

My demonstrated lack of context has prompted me to begin a new series. This is the first of many everyday examples of how you can utilize your lens’s zoom feature while leaving the shutter open. The first part in this series is titled Window Shopping because the two items featured were spotted in shop windows late at night.

EXIF: 100 ISO, 1.5 sec., f/22, 28mm focal length, flash off

Can you tell what I used to create the star burst in the photo above?
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It’s no secret that when you leave the shutter open for more than a second you can get some neat effects when light is moving against a dark background. Many people experiment with this in the usual way with moving cars and rides at the state fair. I still do regularly, in fact. What many people may not know is that you don’t need the light to be in movement to create something unique.

EXIF: 100 ISO, 6 sec., f/22, 40mm focal length, flash on

For the photo above, I popped the flash with a 6 second exposure. After the flash went off, I then tilted the camera while still on the tripod. I didn’t try and do anything specific, I just slowly moved it short distance in a few different directions. The phrase less is more applies tremendously to this particular way of capturing light. It’s very easy to overdo it and create a picture that is just a bunch of squiggly white lines. Simply rock the camera forward and backward on the tripod while two out of the three legs are still on the ground. Try moving just a few inches in each direction.
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After the tripod and camera itself, the next most important piece of gear to own is a remote shutter release. This is a hand held controller either attached by cable or by infrared that can remotely open the shutter. Most models allow you to press once to take a picture normally, as well as press and lock which will hold the shutter open indefinitely when in bulb mode.

This is my off-brand remote, obtained at a local camera shop for around $15. The one made by your camera manufacturer is probably more than $100.
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In the old days, you could get a multiple exposure photo by opening and closing the shutter while not advancing the film. While I’ve heard that there does indeed exist a digital SLR that can do this, my ancient beast isn’t one of them. When looking up the topic when I first upgraded to digital, most examples I found were using post-production (Photoshop) to do this. I’m going to show you how to do this using a hand-held flash unit (Canon Speedlite 430EX was used in the examples below), some colored gels, and a tripod.

EXIF: 200 ISO, 30 sec., f/6.7, 17mm focal length, flash on

For this particular type of photography, you want to stay focused on the exposure time rather than the aperture. You will need at least 4 seconds to get a double exposure, as seen in the photo above. I tend to stay in the 15-20 second range, depending on the amount of available light. The camera setting I recommend most is Tv, or Shutter Priority. This mode allows you to change the exposure length while automatically adjusting the aperture. It’s a delicate balance trying to determine the proper length of time to leave the shutter open. You will need enough time to reposition the flash and/or wait for your subject to move. On the other hand, if you leave the shutter open too long, the subject may barely be visible, even if you popped them with the flash. It is also important to hand hold the flash unit. Not only does light from above look more appealing and real, but it’s more difficult to pop the flash twice during one exposure when mounted to the camera (with my setup, at least).
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