Take a Night or Twilight photograph of your home
Have you ever wanted to take a good night or twilight photograph? I feel that most people like to document events in their lives to share and remember. We all post these images on social media or keep them on our phones. Do you have issues shooting low light images with your phone? Night and twilight photography are forms of low light photography.
Low light photography means any type of photography taken when the light is at its lowest. This can be in a dark room, candlelight, or evening light.
Key points about Night photography & twilight photography
NIGHT PHOTOGRAPHY
Night photography refers to the activity of capturing images outdoors at night, between dusk and dawn
TWILIGHT PHOTOGRAPHY
This type of photography refers to the time of day you take a photo. This can be as the sun sets or rises.
The main point to remember is that night photography is when you take a picture once the moon rises. Twilight is a moment during the day. Have a look at the image below, where it indicates the set 20-25 minutes to take a photograph. During this time it is called the blue hour, where the sky is blue and makes for an ideal photograph.
HOW DO YOU TAKE A TWILIGHT PHOTOGRAPH?
You can take this type of image on your phone or with your SLR camera.
Here are some tips for using your camera:
Use a high ISO to prevent noise - 100
Use a tripod
Use a remote release trigger, self-timer or connect your camera to your iPhone
Have a narrow aperture to nail the focus.
Try aperture priority or manual (the bracketing process is used for night photography images).
Auto white balance
Try and embrace manual focus, with live view to position the focus point. Most cameras let you zoom in on a focused area.
Take multiple exposures during 20-25 minutes, as the light changes quickly
Have a watch of my short video that explains my process, which links to the key tips to the left.
I have briefly included the bracketing process, as I decided to take some multiple-exposure images of my house during this time. Bracketing is brilliant when shooting night photographs.
Have a go at this process with your camera and try to take a photograph of your own house during the blue hour, which is either 20-25 mins before sunset or before sunrise.
The editing process for a Twilight image
When editing Night or Twilight photographs, you may use Photoshop or Lightroom.
On further research into this editing process, I have found that there are many ways to edit and enhance an image and the main one was to remove the house part of the images and then include an image to enhance the sky section, so take a look at the video below for this process. I have only included this video for editing a house image, as there are many ways to modify other twilight or night photographs and the purpose of this blog is to encourage you to play with the technique of shooting your own home during isolation.
You could experiment with photographing landscapes, people, stars & buildings to capture twilight photography. For night photography, you could take photographs of an urban environment, architecture, people, and look at taking photographs of stars.
If you are interested in shooting night photographs, download the attached file on Night Photography.
USE YOUR PHONE TO TAKE A NIGHTLY PHOTOGRAPH.
This is an image from the NightCap Pro app.
If you are not using a camera, you can take pictures with your mobile phone. Here are some apps to try, which are used to take a better twilight or night photograph:
Slow shutter cam, available for £1.99 (iPhone)
A good camera (Android)
NightCap Pro - £2.99 - (iPhone)
If you wish to take a photograph with your phone and you do not have an app, try and keep your phone steady or purchase a tripod for your phone. Having a tripod will prevent movement in a photograph.
Without downloading an app, you can use HDR, flash, and most phones give you the option to self-time. Your phone gives you the option to move the focus and the exposure is configured along with the focus points. Take a look at these two images below as examples, as you will see the difference in focus and exposure per picture.
For this image, I have moved my focus & exposure square upon the leaves of the plant in the background
For this photograph, I positioned the exposure/focus square on the mug. There is a darker mug exposure because of this.
Once you have played with this option of moving the focus & exposure point around as you take a photograph, you can also lock this option. This is really useful when shooting in a low light situation, as you can lock the exposure before taking a photograph.
For this shot, I used my phone's flash and it lit up the mug.
Tip 1 - Try using the flash when taking a Twilight or Night photograph.
Do remember that flash can be too bright, so as a tip consider using tracing paper or some form of translucent material to make the flash a little softer.
Summary
For this blog article, I wanted to explain the process of taking a twilight photograph of your home. I have included my own process for taking a twilight or night photograph. Please download the PDF for the night photograph process, which is a suggestion of set settings to experiment with.
Whenever you take a low light photograph, you will also edit the image, by enhancing the colour & playing with exposed areas. There are many ways to edit, so I have kept to one example of editing, and this is how to create your own Twilight photograph of your home.
I know we are all at home, we may not all have cameras. I have included a few tips on how to still shoot at home, but with your Android or iPhone camera. I have suggested three apps and I am sure there are many others to experiment with. Some will cost, and others will be cheaper, and have multiple offers that come up each time you use them.
I recommend you participate in this activity. You will need a way to keep your camera or mobile device steady to prevent movement, so purchase a tripod.
Thank you for reading the blog
Contact me if you have questions about this technique.
During May, I decided to introduce an ongoing series of ‘How to….’ blog subjects.
If you are interested, look out for these ‘How to…’ blogs
How to prepare and shoot a food product
How to take light graffiti pictures in the garden
How to use depth of field at home
1:1 PHOTO SESSIONS
I offer a 1:1 photography session, so check out my 1:1 page for further details. I am selling gift cards, which would be a fantastic gift for a friend or relative interested in photography.
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