Night photography — It is difficult and downright baffling for many. We wanted to use this blog as a way to bring you some quick information and inspiration about night photography; specifically, landscape photography at night. As you know, we are passionate about art and photography education, so bringing that to you in many different ways is important to us.

When we first saw the following image by Lillian Reitz (Read our interview with Lillian HERE), we knew we wanted to learn more about how she accomplished such a sharp, crisp, colorful, vibrant, beautiful image of a landscape at nighttime. That, my friends, is not an easy thing to accomplish and we wanted to know her tricks. So…..we asked. Lucky for us, those in our community are also passionate about education and giving back and Lillian was STOKED to share her knowledge with us. So first, she is going to introduce herself to you all and then she’s going to spill the beans.

About the Author

My love of photography started young and was directly inspired by my Grandpa Bill, who loved to document everyday life. As a toddler and young child, I was mostly interested in posing for the camera, but as I got older I became more interested in capturing photos. For years and years, photography was just a fun hobby, and I deluded myself into thinking that I could never be a professional. Everything changed in 2017 when Hurricane Harvey made landfall over my small town of Rockport, Texas. I stayed through the storm and very thankfully came through unharmed with very little personal damage, but our town was in shambles. So many people lost everything they owned, and I wanted to help in any way I could. For three months offered free sessions for families that lost their homes as well as donation-based sessions to help raise money for close friends who lost their business. After experiencing such a catastrophic natural disaster, I was no longer as scared of starting my own business. In January 2018, I started my business as a part-time side hustle. I have been full-time since February 2019!

For more inspiration from Lillian:

Interview | Instagram | Website | Facebook

PREPARATION (OR LACK THEREOF) TO GET THE SHOT

What I love most about this photo is that it nearly didn't happen. I drove past the carnival several days in a row with little notice other than the increased traffic in my small town. It wasn't until the last night of the festival that I drove past after dark and noticed the reflection of the lights on the water. Instantly, I knew there was a photo to be had. As I drove home to get my camera equipment, I was honestly thinking about how tired I felt and how much I wanted to eat cookies in bed. (Y'all, I'm not talking just a couple of cookies, like a whole box of cookies!) Still, I knew that I wouldn't have another chance to get this photo. I got home, grabbed my camera bag, and rummaged to the back of my closet to find my rarely used tripod. Drove back to the carnival, parked, carried all my things out to the best spot I could find, set up my tripod, turned on my camera, and then realized that I had no SD card. After a good 5 minutes of digging through my camera bag in the hopes of finding a spare, my sarcastic inner voice was loudly praising my professionalism. Cookies REALLY sounded good at this point, but again, I knew this was going to be a good photo and didn't want to regret not capturing it. Half an hour later, I was back in the same spot, this time with an SD card.

TAKING THE PHOTO

Now it was time to get down to business. My main goals were as follows:

Symmetry, primarily through the reflection on the water
Movement, specifically in the Ferris wheel
Starbursts of light, something I had seen in others' photos but hadn't done myself

My first goal was the easiest. I took a couple of test shots with my go-to lens, the 35mm, and instantly realized that I would need to use my 70-200mm. I switched my lens and also adjusted my position slightly to make sure that my composition included the carnival rides as well as their reflection.

Goals two and three would require a little more experimentation to get the right balance between all of my settings. For my second goal, I knew I would need to play around with my shutter speed. Faster shutter speeds will freeze movement, and slower shutter speeds will show movement. I loved that I could see the flat side of the Ferris wheel from my position and thought it would bring a little bit of life into the photo to capture it moving. I started off with what I thought was a pretty slow shutter speed of 1/40 of a second. It wasn't slow enough, so I slowed down even more to 2 seconds.

QUICK TIP:

When working with slow shutter speeds, even the smallest camera shake can drastically affect the final image. Using a sturdy tripod and a delayed shutter or remote trigger can help a lot! I used the Canon Camera Connect app to trigger my shutter for these photos.*

Goal number three, to capture starbursts of light, was super exciting for me and something that I had never tried before. I don't even remember where I learned this, but I had the vague idea that if I closed down my aperture, it would create a starburst effect on the brightest sources of light. A wide aperture (smaller f-stop values) will allow more light into your camera. A narrow aperture (larger f-stop values) will restrict the light coming into your camera. Now, this is totally foreign to me because I love love love bokeh and nearly always have my lens wide open (f1.4 to f2.5). For my first attempt, I brought my aperture to f/8, which resulted in a lackluster starburst.

Next, I stopped ALL the way down to f/32 and ended up with a very dark photo (remember a narrow aperture will allow less light into your photo). I adjusted my shutter speed to be even slower to allow in more light and finally started getting an image close to what I imagined. After a bit more adjustments between my shutter speed and aperture, I finally got what I was looking for!

EDITING

Getting the photo took about three times as long as I thought it would, so I really wanted my editing to be quick and straightforward. With my box of (in my opinion, well earned) cookies on my desk, I opened my files in lightroom and quickly found my top 2-3 images. After fixing the horizon and white balance, I slapped on the Ektar 100 preset from Matsin labs because I knew it would highlight the vibrant colors in the picture. With minor adjustments in the control panel (most notably, decreasing the highlights values), I was almost done. To further clean up the look of the image, I used the healing tool to eliminate a few light flares that I found distracting. Voilà!