As the Northern Hemisphere is now shrouded a large part of the time in darkness, it seems apt to celebrate night photography and to embrace those inky skies! Night fall is a great backdrop for a plethora of situations adding drama and atmosphere to a potentially mundane frame.
Skylines can look fantastic at twilight and are transformed from blocks of flat concrete to sparkling fantastical towers. There are plenty of opportunities for lifestyle shots as more people exercise at night, enjoy social activities, work later, shop at night and outdoor night festivals and events become more popular. And night of course is a great time for capturing the nocturnal behaviour of wildlife, weather and natural phenomena – even plants and vegetation can look surreal and strange under the guise of night.
Technically shooting at night has its many challenges, but the good news is that advances in photography equipment have made it easier to capture that great and arresting image at night. Jim Richardson, a National Geographic shooter of night skies, advises ‘that the single greatest photographic advance for shooting the night sky has been the breathtaking advance in camera low-light sensitivity’. And expert time lapse, volcano specialist and night photographer Grant Kaye likewise enthuses that “In the last five years, shooting at night with digital cameras has improved one thousand-fold if not more. Full-frame, low-noise sensors in cameras with fast RAW processing hardware and speedy storage cards have brought us into a new era of night photography.â€
What I love about night photography is the potential narrative and storytelling elements that lend themselves to shooting at this time. Concepts like mystery, suspense, isolation, fantasy, visibility, enigma, absence, metropolis, power, the unknown, thrive in this setting. These images can often pose questions. In contemporary media culture we’re aware of the influence of has had on cinematography which can easily translate into photography stills. It‘s also hardly surprising that night shots are often used to illustrate the book covers for the most popular genres of crime, thrillers, suspense, supernatural and fantasy.
I thought it apt to end with this quote from Tim Baskerville, founder of the night-photography organization The Nocturnes. “Night Photography is a ritual, one that involves the engagement of light and time, creative vision, and circumstance.â€
Some sources for night photography inspiration:
For more night imagery, check out our nocturnal lightbox.