The Special Light of Night Photography
There’s something special about night photography. Even the most characterless scene can suddenly ooze with personality when the sun goes down. In absence of the greatest and most powerful natural light of all – sunlight – the photographer must seek either artificial light or reflected light from the moon to create beautiful night photography. It takes time and patience to allow the camera to soak up what limited light is available. It takes special techniques, special equipment and special planning. But the rewards of perfectly capturing the quiet beauty of a nightscape are endless.
Illuminating the Darkness
The world looks totally different at night. On beaches and coastlines, moonbeams breathe an icy whiteness across land and ocean, transforming the familiar into something entirely new. In towns and cities, empty streets crawl with strange shadows cast by streetlamps, headlights, house lights, neon lights, and all other electric light that beams, flashes or flickers in the darkness. Metal and glass catch every glint and glimmer available, and like the stars up above, a thousand twinkling eyes blink open and glitter all around. Yes, light may be sparse and scattered at night. But what light there is reveals the world in a different way – in different colours, shades and textures – which is precisely why I find night photography so rewarding and, indeed, so illuminating.