Evening and Night Photography

This picture was taken as the sun was setting, when the sun has just gone below the rim of the earth. The street lights are on and the shops are lit-up. If you were to set the colour temperature setting on your camera to "Tungsten" the sky will go to a more interesting colour. The bottom picture is shot with a daylight setting and the top has been adjusted to look as it might shot with a tungsten setting.

This is just one approach to shooting at night. Another is to use flash to capture moving objects but also using a camera shuuter speed that will allow the ambient light to record. I don't recommend that you photograph passing vehicles in case you cause distress to the driver. At least not without warning them first. When shooting in this way it is best (if you can) to use something called second blade synchronisation. What happens here is the camera flash will fire at the end of an exposure instead of the beginning (as normally happens). For example: you could photograph someone running (dancing or any movement) and what happens with the image is that the last bit of the movement is recorded with flash and is static with the blur behind it. Try shootting both ways to see what I mean. I will try and produce some images to back me up on this. One more thing is to remember that the best light of the day occurs a couple of hours before sunset - when the shadows are long and the colour is warm.