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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