I would have been quite content to get a sunset shot of Edinburgh castle or the Walter Scott monument (the monument in the picture above) had it not been for the enticing sparkly lights of the fairground rides which have been set up in Princes Street Gardens for the Christmas festivities. I had travelled fairly lightly but thankfully I had my trusty gorillapod with me (which I’m a big fan of and will write about separately at some point) although you’d be surprised at how much the bridge vibrates so I had to fire off quite a lot of shots to make sure that I had a few frames without any camera shake. It also explains why I shot at f/2.8 and ISO 200.

It’s amazing how time slows down when you’re absolutely freezing and today’s experience reminded me how hard you’ve got to work sometimes to get a good night shot. In my opinion, the best night shots are single exposures taken at the exact moment the ambient light from the sky and the artificial light from the street lights (or whatever other source of light there is) are perfectly balanced (see another couple of examples here and here). And that, unfortunately, often necessitates a long wait in the cold which my girlfriend can certainly testify to! I’ve posted below a variety of frames from this evening of the same scene to show what happens to the overall exposure of a shot as the sun goes down and how it’s easy to think, prematurely, that the best light has passed.

3:42pm (Nikon D200 @ 55mm, 1/250 sec, f/2.8, ISO 100)

3:55pm (Nikon D200 @ 55mm, 1/200 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200)

4:05pm (Nikon D200 @ 55mm, 1/80 sec, f/2.8, ISO 280)

4:15pm (Nikon D200 @ 55mm, 1/30 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200)

4:25pm (Nikon D200 @ 55mm, 1/5 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200)

4:34pm (Nikon D200 @ 55mm, 1/3 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200)

As you can see from the shots, the lighting isn’t very interesting at 3:42pm but at 3:55pm and 4:05pm you’ve got some nice colours. You could perhaps walk away at this point as you’ve got (with a little photoshop tweaking) a half decent sunset silhouette image. It’s then very easy to wait another ten minutes, at 4:15pm, and think that the colours are disappearing so it’s definitely time to pack your bags. But I wouldn’t always be in such a hurry to do that.

As you’ll know, in this situation I was getting a silhouette of the buildings because I was shooting towards the sun (which was bright) but the sun was too low to light up the foreground (which was dark). That makes sense. However, as the sun went down even further, my exposures were getting longer and so I was starting to get some colour back into the sky and, more importantly, the foreground. This period doesn’t last for long though and so you’ve got to make sure you don’t miss your chance. The images at 4:25pm and 4:34pm (which is the one my final image is based on) are both nice and you get a good balance of ambient and artificial light. The final image I took at 4:45pm (which isn’t posted) came out ok but the sky was starting to get too dark so it was time to pack up my gear and get the blood circulating in my hands again.

Night photography is difficult and quite frustrating at times, particularly since an outing will (for me at least) usually only end up with you being able to capture one scene where you get those lovely colours in the sky that long(er) exposures can produce. Once you miss that you’ve got to start thinking about multiple exposures and/or HDR images (for example, have a look at this one). Otherwise your shots will probably have black skies in them (which is not to say that they won’t be nice).

So, the moral of the story when you’re after that perfect night shot is to wrap up warm and be patient. Unfortunately, that’s easier (and less painful) said than done!