Night Photography.

As you are probably aware, night photography is basically painting with light onto a black background. The trick to it is to leave your shutter open and let it pick up any light to create an image.
Here are some photos I took a few years ago as part of a University project. It was my first play with night photography. They were taken with a really lightweight tripod and a compact digital camera (hence the blur and grain in the photos) however I was very proud of them at the time and have learnt alot since then. I shall share some of this knowledge with you.

Firstly you need a strong and sturdy tripod paired with a remote. I use a wired remote, this is beacuse of times when you are out as a group, your remote could fire off the wrong camera. The use of the remote means you dont wobble the camera and it gives you the freedom to leave the shutter open for aslong as you want without having to pre-set a time. Here are some photos I took more recently with a photographer who specialises in night photography. There were many techniques used to create these images and I can't go into all of them. However a few things you could try yourslef are 'popping' and 'trails'. Popping is simply using your camera flash to quickly light the subject at the same time as your shutter, This is the technique used for the first photo, however done with a flash box, held higher than my head. Trails are drawing with light, this can be using a torch to illuminate a subject, using sparklers or flames etc to draw/ write something or to leave your shutter open to capture things such as car headlights down a road. The best thing I can say is to experiment, once your head around the fact that anything you dont directly light will not show in the photo then the more control you will have over the final outcome of the image.

Yes, that stunning model in the photos is me :P for some I opened the shutter using the remote, ran off to play with the light then came back to close it, for others I got a friend to do the honours for me. It is always best when doing night photogarphy to go as a small group, not only becasue of the obvious safety reasons of being out at night alone, but also so you can help each other by controlling their shutters or handing out light equipement. I think the next night photography thing I will try is using sparklers and glow sticks, I've seen some amazing things done with a simple sparkler so I think I will have to come up with some ideas and give it a go myself. I will let you know how It goes. I will leave you with some cute little mounts which I bought at a stunning little exhibition in Old Portsmouth. The photos are from www.longexposures.co.uk. The way he presented the photos (wire and magnets on hard boards) became inspiration for how I displayed my final project in my photography unit at University which I did pretty well for. So i'm grateful not only for the cute photos hung in my room, but for also inspiring me to not just print out my photos on flat paper, like everyone else. I recommend you check out the website, their photos are so interesting and inspiring.