Night Photography

 

    Night photography was something that I really enjoyed experimenting with this semester. I even got to drag some of my friends in to have some fun with me. I tend to be attracted to darker things, and night photos that I had seen before were always incredible to me, but I didn't understand the challenge of having very little source of light at night. Now, I've learned that a little light means a long shutter speed. This means that you definitely need a tripod unless you want a very blurry image, and that movement in the frame will definitely be noticeable. 

    I wanted to try this thing called light painting that I'd heard about before. Pros use tons of fun and colorful lights to make amazing light paintings. Living in my dorm, I do not have any fancy lights, but I do have friends with smart phones, and flashlights on their smart phones!

    It was so fun to see how excited everyone got when we saw that an image worked out, no one really knew what to expect, but the end result was so cool!

    I especially love the red lines that cars leave behind as they drive past. It pops so nicely in all of these images that are mostly green and just adds a little more interest that isn't there otherwise. 

    Colors seem so much more vibrant at night then I thought they would. Although, I struggle with determining if an image is at the proper exposure when it's night time. I know it won't look how it does to my eye, are things supposed to be as light as they would be during the day time? I'm not sure about this, but I suppose it is subjective, at least to an extent. 

    I even decided to take a swing at night cell phone photography with this image. I was just at a bonfire at a friend's farm, and loved how the light from the huge fire was creating these shadows and lighting this tree and shed. My iPhone has a fun night mode feature on the camera and I think this proved it pretty successful. I'm not really sure how it works, because I was holding the phone, so if the shutter was open for a while you would likely be able to tell, and the quality still looks pretty nice, but I won't question a good thing. 

    It's awesome that we carry devices on us at almost all times that are capable of taking wonderful images. Now that I know a bit more about photography, I'll try to look for more spontaneous, every-day moments to capture like this one. Day or night!