Once the sun goes down, artificial light can offer some great opportunities to shoot distinctive images. In part one of this series Robert Keeley looks at some handy techniques for budding night photographers.
Many beginners are inclined to pack up their gear once the sun goes down, often because they have tried once or twice to shoot at night time, and got some very disappointing results. But professionals and serious amateurs know that opportunities abound once the sun disappears.
It’s mainly a matter of knowing some fundamental techniques, and then experimenting. Once you have a grasp of these basics, night or low-light shooting provides an unrestricted setting in which to experiment, and to stretch your photographic knowledge. So let’s look at a few different approaches you can try to expand your boundaries beyond the edge of darkness.
01 USE A TRIPOD
There are a whole range of ideas you can try out with night or low-light shooting, but it’s usually best to start with the basics and progress from there. The most basic way to improve your night images is by setting up each shoot with a tripod. The reason is that most cameras, if left on Auto, correct for the low lighting in night scenarios by making longer exposures, just so their sensor receives enough light to make a ‘correct’ exposure.
Longer exposures in low light without a tripod will invariably come out blurred. Later on, this may be an experiment you want to try out. Once you’re branching out with your experimentation, you can think about circumventing the need for a tripod, but to begin with your ‘night’ moves it’s important to get sharp images, and using a tripod is the best way to do this. But one point to bear in mind is that it can be tricky to check if you have a parallel horizon line when looking through a gloomy optical viewfinder. Like every element when you’re shooting at night, act deliberately and carefully, double checking every move you make.
By using a tripod you can steady your camera over the course of a long exposure. Blur (as in this image in the paddle wheels) can be used effectively, whilst most of the image remains sharp.
02 WORK THE AMBIENT LIGHT
Beginners often make the incorrect assumption that once the sun has set, there’s no light for photography. Actually, there’s just enough light, but most of it is artificial. Man-made light, however, is just as good (and sometimes much more atmospheric) than sunlight. Good night photography begins, like most other good photography, with careful observation. Take a walk around your city, suburb, country town, or even out in the bush, and you’ll rarely come across a scene where there is absolutely no light at all. Even in the bush, you’ll often have star light and light from the moon!
In cities, towns, and suburbs there is usually plenty of light. It comes from buildings, street lights, cars, and best of all, neon advertising signs. All these options offer great light to work with. After you’ve observed these, begin some experiments by setting up your tripod and shooting in some of these environments. Set a standard ISO rating (ISO 100) and try shooting exposures anywhere from a few seconds, up to 30 seconds. As you experiment more, you might even shoot much longer exposures.
03 STREAKS AND BLUR
Soon enough you’ll realise that if you photograph moving traffic, the lights of the cars will blur over a longer exposure (which is what you’ll need if you want a reasonably exposed image). You can use this blur very creatively if your timing is right. Of course, with longer exposures, moving people or objects will blur, but if you’re using a tripod stationary objects will remain pin sharp. This can create all sorts of possiblities – so use them!
When traffic is present, steady your camera on a tripod and try a long exposure. The effects from passing traffic can be dramatic and different.
04 POST-PRODUCTION TECHNIQUES
These days most photographers manipulate with their images using post-production techniques. This can easily be overdone, and there are plenty of examples of that around on the web, and sometimes in magazines. In my view subtle effects are the better, and if you take this approach you may spend less time in front of a computer, and more out and about – taking photographs! But even allowing for that, there are times when some post-production will pay dividends. 
I didn't have a lot of time when I set up this scene with the old vendor holding his light. But on the computer it was a touch dark, so I used the 'Dodge' feature to brighten certain areas.
In the first image here, of an old man running a game of chance in a foreign city, I was looking for an abstract composition. I shot it with a tripod, asking the old man to stay very still, but I later realised I’d under-exposed marginally beyond the effect I wanted to achieve. This was easily adjusted in software, though it was only a minor adjustment.
In the second image of the city skyline of Shanghai, I was unable to get to the location when the sun was setting (which is always a good standby for shooting towards darkness in urban or bush locales because it offers a hint of light in your background). 
When I shot this scene it was already dark, apart from the neon-lit buildings of Shanghai's city skyline. In post-production I used a warming filter effect to distinguish between the skyscrapers and the darkness.
With a heavy dose of pollution in this Chinese city, it was encased in darkness – no stars shone and the moon was absent. To distinguish the distinctive buildings from the black background I added a ‘warming filter’ effect in Photoshop. It was a subtle, but worthwhile adjustment. Initially at least, until you become more expert, aim to keep your image manipulation at a subtle level.
Even with artificial light, if you want a sharp image when shooting at night, it's best to use a tripod.
Quite effective images can be made simply by relying on the ambient light available at night.
Next week, in part two, we share some useful tips for shooting in low-light interiors, the importance of pre-dawn and post-sunset light, and the value of experimentation when shooting at night.