I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day.
Vincent Van Gogh
While night photography presents certain challenges, photography is all about capturing light. Even the darkest night is not completely dark. I find that the light at night often allows me to create fresher, more mysterious and more captivating images than daylight. Night lighting that I find particularly exciting are the twilight hours, moon light and even artificial urban light. Photographing at night presents certain challenges and requires specific knowledge, equipment and techniques. The current generation of digital cameras and digital image developing software have made it possible to “see” the night through photographs in ways that weren’t possible before.
Recently I have enjoyed books by two fellow night photographers that proved to be very well written and extremely content rich: Seeing The Unseen by Alister Benn and Photographing The 4th Dimension-TIME by Jim Goldstein.
Seeing The Unseen is a complete handbook for the most up to date techniques in night photography using a digital SLR camera. If you are a creature of the night, or at least captivated by images of silky surf, sweeping stars capes and otherworldly lighting and want to learn how to take such images then this book is a great companion. Alister takes you through his entire process including understanding the different types and phases of night light, preparation, equipment needed, evaluating the scene, focusing, camera settings, use of ISO, field techniques, dynamic range considerations, composition and much more.
Copyright Alister Benn
In addition to being very complete and easy to understand, the book is worth owning simply for the writing and images. Alister’s writing is far more poetic, contemplative and inspiring than one would expect from a how-to guide and his beautiful, imagination capturing images illustrate every page. Seeing The Unseen can be purchased at HarvestingLight.net and until October 1, 2012 you can get 25% off the price (which was already an extreme value) by using the code ALINEW1.
Photographing The 4th Dimension-TIME by Jim Goldstein isn’t specifically about night photography, but rather the techniques and equipment used for manipulating time in photography. It is one of the most extensive, user friendly and elegant guides to the subject. A big part of understanding night photography is related to manipulating the time variable in low light exposures. Jim leaves no stone unturned, carefully explaining how cameras perceive time differently than we do. He spends a good portion of the book on long exposure night photography including techniques, equipment, technical considerations, light painting techniques and photographing star trails. In addition to the night photography specific content he also covers other time related topics such as time sequences, time lapse video, stopping and accentuation action with strobes, and even video techniques. Everything is well cross referenced and supported with clean illustrations and charts. It even includes links to online content and videos as well as printable field checklists and reference charts. The price of this book is also an extreme value.
Jim also now offers a Mastering Star Trail Photography video course with six hours of video instruction on the current techniques of star trail photography. People who purchase the video receive a free copy of the book Photographing The 4th Dimension-TIME.
Copyright Jim Golstein
Finding good learning and reference material can be a challenge these days with so much low quality content to sift through on the web. I have a lot of respect for the talents of both of these gentlemen as photographers, writers and teachers. For those looking for solid and well presented information on night photography I can recommend both of these books.
Sean is an outdoor photographer, digital image developing enthusiast and photography educator based in Ashland, Oregon, where he resides with his wife and two sons. His previous career as a science teacher makes photography education a good fit. Sean teams up with fellow Photo Cascadia members leading workshops. He also teaches digital image developing classes, lectures and offers a series of Photoshop video tutorials.
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