Dark Photography School

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.


EXIF: 200 ISO, 1 sec., f/9.5, 17mm focal length, flash off

Once you begin to approach the one second range for exposure times, you will want to consider using a flash to add definition and a bit of clarity to otherwise blurry photos. If the composition involves people, this is even more important.

Your homework assignment: Go out at night (preferably in an urban area) and leave your camera in Tv mode, keeping the exposure time between 1/4 of a second and 1/2 second. Look for anything that moves–buses, cars, people, trains, anything. If you can find something that moves repetitively or for a long period of time (such as a long moving train), try taking several different photos with different exposure times. The more you experiment with this, the better understanding you will get of how different exposure times freeze items in movement.