Do you put your camera away when the sun goes down?  I’d like to challenge you to keep it at the ready.  There is so much you can do with your camera in the dark.  And the upcoming July 4th holiday in the United States gives us Americans a perfect opportunity to practice.  Last year, I put my camera on a tripod and began snapping away, adjusting my settings to achieve different effects.  First, I tried freezing the action with a fast shutter speed. Then I tried slowing it down to see more of the trails of light.  Lastly, I tried using a wide-open aperture.  I liked the results of bokeh dots in the sky, but I felt like I needed something else in the frame to give it some interest.  That’s when I noticed my daughter all cozied up on her daddy’s lap.  I metered for the fireworks in the sky and locked my exposure before re-focusing on their heads to create a sharp silhouette.  I waited for the next big boom and snapped my shots.

But really, you don’t need a fireworks display to play with your camera in the dark.  You just need some light and a steady surface.  Fences, car window ledges, folding chairs, a big rock – they’ll all do in a pinch.  Wide open apertures like F2.8, when left out of focus, give you those round bubble bokehs.  Smaller apertures like F11 or higher  will give you the starbursts.

Have you tried using a flashlight to light your subjects?   I was working on an image that I specifically wanted to have a “moody” feel to it.  I put this wilted flower in a dark corner one evening and used a flashlight to paint some highlights into an otherwise black frame.  It took several tries to get the hang of where to shine the light to achieve what I was imagining in my head, but I had fun trying something different.

Speaking of using flashlights – have you ever messed around with light painting?  For light painting, you’ll need to use a long exposure (generally between 8 and 30 seconds).  Every move from a source of light, like a flashlight, for instance, will be registered by the camera.  It’s always a big hit with my kids and their friends.  We set up the camera in the backyard on a tripod, arm all the kids with a different flashlight, some glow-sticks, and any other light-up items we might have on hand and set them loose to run around creating giant works of art that show up through the lens.  In the image below, we used the same concept but at the end of a 12 second exposure, I used my flash to illuminate my students.  It allowed the light painting designs to show up but also created enough light to freeze a few of them in the frame before the shutter closed.

If you have access to an area that has very little light pollution at night and clear skies, you can even attempt star trail images.  Star trails are basically just long exposure images where the stars appear as streaks in the sky, because of the rotation of the earth.  There are two popular methods for capturing the trails.  You can take several long exposures of 30 seconds or more and stack them together in photoshop, or you can create one really long exposure – anywhere from 30 minutes to several hours depending on the conditions and your setting.   The image below was taken in Moab near a rock formation called Nefertiti’s Head in Arches National Park. The exposure time was about 30 minutes and it’s one of my first attempts at capturing the beautiful night sky in motion.  I’m certain it will not be my last and I’m having fun stepping so far outside my comfort zone with this type of photography.

As photographers, we spend all our time chasing light.  It just makes sense that we would continue to look for the light, perhaps even more so, when we’re in the dark.

Keep looking for the light – Angie