Night Photography Tips

We were all set to do the last poker run of the season and hanging out with the other ‘poker players’ at Roadkill Bar waiting to be signed in when Leisa realized just how late the poker run was going to last and decided to take a pass. Since I am also an early riser and was feeling in pumpkin mode, I thought it was not a bad idea.

As we were driving back up north we caught sight of the blue moon, it was even bigger and better than last night, very exciting and a good confirmation that we had made the right decision. When we got back to Grand Caribe I grabbed my camera and went snap happy at the beach.

I was playing around with different all the settings and ended liking the pictures I was getting with indoor which I thought was pretty funny. Leave it to a dyslexic to be taking outdoor night time  photography on the  indoor setting. Anyone have any thoughts on why indoor mode worked better nighttime one?

In yesterday’s night time photography post I asked if anyone had any insight on better night photography and woke up with an the following email from Joseph with a few great photo tips. I am going to try the flashlight one for sure.

Tacogirl,

Those color swap photos are cool.

When you take pictures of the moon, because the earth is rotating you want to ensure your shutter speeds don’t go any slower than 1/30 of a second or the movement will show up as blurry moon.

Pictures coming out dark?  Use  a flashlight to add some back ground detail and separate your subjects from the scene.  Can be used with long exposures over 3 seconds long.  Or shine the flashlight back at the camera while shooting to make light streaks through the photo.

Do you have a separate old flash?  Set the tripod up pointing at a black or a black as possible back drop. Next set your F-stop based on the flash distance from it to your subject (if they are holding it about three feet, a low f stop f11 or f16  maybe. Pre-focus using a flashlight.  Now when the shutter is open have the subject move across the scene pointing the flash at  themselves and firing it several times as they  move.  Multi exposures of the same subject in one photo.  Experiment, funny seeing yourself in the same photo three to four times. It takes time not to get ghost images over the second shot but when they line up side by side it looks amazing.