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Shooting Street Scenes, Tips and Tricks From Night and Low-Light Photography Photo Workshop Book
January 26, 2012
Here is an excerpt from Chapter 8 from Night and Low-Light Photography Photo Workshop, excerpted with permission from John Wiley and Sons, Inc. The book is available in stores and through online retailers nationwide. Here’s a link to a multi-retailer sales page. Author Alen Hess is a professional event and concert photographer whose subjects have included The Grateful Dead, Bruce Hornsby, John Legend, Robin Williams, and many more.
When the sun sets and the city lights start to come on, it looks like the city is waking up and coming to life. The drabness of the day is slowly replaced by an energy that is most evident in the way the city is lit. Think of the city as a one-stop show for night photography, as it offers a huge variety of different subjects. These can include the street scenes, light trails, bright neon lights, and the cityscapes themselves.
There is also a lot of fun to be had photographing the same scene in both day and night and comparing them. One of the biggest differences is the direction of the light. When the scene in Figure 8-1 is lit during the day, the sun is the main light source and the light comes from overhead, but at night, the light comes from within the scene, from the lights used to illuminate the memorial from the ground up, which creates a look that does not exist during the day.
ABOUT THIS PHOTO The memorial shot at 40 seconds allowed me to capture the detail in the stone, yet the people visiting it look a lot like ghosts. Taken at 40 seconds, f/22, and ISO 100.
STREET SCENES
Big cities are a great place to capture street scenes after dark. This is because there are people, activities, and enough light sources to make all these scenes relatively easy to capture. The bigger the city, the more action there is, and the better your chances of finding something worth photographing. If you are not in a big city, then the best bet is to go out looking on a Friday or Saturday night.
The best time to photograph street scenes is right after the sun has set, while there is still some ambient light in the sky. If you are in your hometown, then you will already know where the center of the nightlife is, and will most likely know how to get there and back home. If on vacation or visiting a new area, it is a good idea to check out the area during the day if possible. The more you know the area, the easier it is to get the images you want. The activity around shopping areas and tourist attractions makes them good subjects to try. Just pick a spot and let the action flow around you, as I did in Figure 8-2 when I photographed outside the downtown mall. I used a relatively fast shutter speed and a high ISO to freeze the cars in place and make the pedestrians visible.
When shooting street scenes, there are two main points of view to try. The first is a street-level view where the camera is set up so that the action flows around it and everything looks as if it was taken at the street level. This can give your images a sense that the viewer is part of the scene, as everything looks in the proper perspective.
The other point of view is to look down on the scene from a higher vantage point, such as from a balcony, deck, hillside, or bridge that overlooks the scene. For example, the shopping mall in Figure 8-2 is built to allow views out to the surrounding streets, which provides multiple angles and views of the same scene. When photographing down from the higher levels, a longer focal length is better because the compression can make elements at various distances seem to be close together, even when they are far apart.
ABOUT THIS PHOTO Outside the Horton plaza center in San Diego. Taken at .4 second, f/2.8, and ISO 800.
As much fun as photographing is at night, it can also be a very dangerous thing to do. No matter what else is going on, your safety needs to be the most important consideration when you are out shooting. Remember to use your common sense, and don’t put yourself in danger just to get a photograph. It isn’t worth it. Here are some of the things you need to look out for:
Cars and traffic. The biggest danger when taking night photographs in the city is passing cars. Most drivers can’t see you most of the time, and by the time they do, it can be too late. Make sure that you stay off the road and on the sidewalk when shooting. Be careful where you set up your tripod to make sure it doesn’t impede the flow of foot traffic.
Shady characters and neighborhoods. There are some places where having a camera out in the open is a bad idea, and having it out at night is a worse idea. Pay attention to the neighborhood and don’t put yourself in any danger. If you have any doubts, don’t photograph there, or ask people who know the area; the best thing to do is to make sure you pay attention to your surroundings. It is very easy to get caught up in capturing an image, and people can walk right up to you before you realize they are there. Bringing along a friend can provide an extra pair of eyes looking out while you set up and take the photos.
The weather. Getting caught outdoors in the rain is one thing, but getting caught out in the rain with your camera gear is a whole other story. Not only do you have to protect yourself, but you also need to protect your camera gear. Wearing appropriate shoes and making sure you have the proper rain gear is important; check out the camera rain covers from Think Tank Photo, which are designed with photographers in mind.
Let someone know where you are. The most important safety measure is to let someone know where you are and when you plan on being back. I make sure that my wife knows where I am shooting and when I plan on being done, and I check in if any of those plans change. Just make sure that you check in when you are done. It would not be a good thing for the person awaiting your call to be up all night worrying; they might just call the police.
Follow these precautions in order to stay safe when out photographing in the city at night, especially if you are in an unfamiliar city or are on vacation. If you are on vacation, check with the hotel staff on the best places to go and those to avoid.
USING DIFFERENT SHUTTER SPEEDS
The longer the shutter is open, the more light is allowed to reach the sensor in your camera. However, the shutter speed also controls how time is captured in your images: Open the shutter speed for a tiny fraction of a second and you can freeze a moment forever; allow the shutter to open for a little longer and the razor-sharp scene starts to blur; keep the shutter open for a long time and items in motion can actually disappear from your photo.
When it comes to photographing city lights, there are no right or wrong shutter speeds; just know what the approximate results will be before taking the photo. When photographed with long shutter speeds, areas with a lot of foot traffic will look empty and lifeless because the moving figures will not be recorded. For areas where there is car traffic, the cars are frozen when using a fast shutter speed or rendered as light trails with a slower shutter speed, as shown in Figures 8-3 and 8-4.
ABOUT THIS PHOTO Using a shutter speed 1/40 second actually
froze the traffic into individual cars. Taken at 1/40 second, f/2.8, and ISO 1600.
It is impossible to give you the right settings to use for street photography because the lighting is different every time. It just takes a little experimentation. I suggest that you start on shutter speed priority so that you can decide how to portray the passage of time in the scene. Depending on how much of the scene is lit, the better choices for metering modes are spot metering or center-weighted metering. If the edges of the frame are really dark, using these modes stops the light meter from taking that darkness into account and overexposing the resulting photo.
One way to increase your chances of getting the image you want is to use the auto bracketing feature of your camera. You set the auto bracketing function on your camera so that it takes a series of photos each time you press the shutter button — one with a –1 exposure value, one normal, and one with a +1 exposure value. Bracketing can help you get the image you want. If your camera doesn’t have auto bracketing, you can use the exposure compensation to take a frame that is underexposed by one stop and a frame over exposed by one stop, along with the frame that is properly exposed. It is also a good idea to shoot in RAW mode so that any color correction can be done using as much information as possible.
ABOUT THIS PHOTO Using a shutter speed of 1 second rendered the moving cars as streaks of light. Taken at 1 second, f/5, and
ISO 100.
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onOne Photoshop Plugins Sale - Plus Exclusive 10% Discount
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