Table of Contents
Find the Right Subject
I live in an ancient town in England called Rye. I won’t bore you with any details about the city. However, before I took this shot I knew that all of the lampposts and street signs in town had a certain old-fashioned character, with interesting, slightly curved angles and details.
There is this one street called Conduit Hill, which is just off the High Street. It is basically a hill and the pavement is adorned with cobblestones. At the top of this street is where I took this photo.
Shooting Mode
The camera that I used for this image is the Sony A7RIII. I usually use Manual Mode at night, but I used Aperture Priority for this image to dial in the initial correct exposure, as there was sufficient light from the surrounding shops.
Lens
The lens that I used was the Tamron 24 – 75mm lens. I had the lens zoomed in at 75mm. This is because I need to stand safely by the road, which was very close to the subject. When I am shooting this kind of photograph I can use a zoom lens because I am not running around looking for people for people to photograph.
Camera Setting
The camera that I used for this image is the Sony A7RIII with the Tamron 24 – 75mm lens for the composition. I had the lens zoomed in at 75mm.
Because this is a static shot without people in it, I could afford to use a Tripod and keep my ISO at the low level of 200. I also did not need to increase my Shutter Speed at all as the shot was locked off on the tripod. Therefore, I was able to use very slow shutter speeds
The main technical detail you need to watch for is blowing out the highlights as this is very easy to do, even with a correctly exposed histogram. The way to mitigate this is by bracketing your shots.
When I took this image I used the bracket setting on my camera to shoot three bracketed shots. 2 stops are underexposed, a correctly exposed image and two stops are overexposed. I then used the Histogram to check where the highlights and Shadows were.
The initial exposure – My settings for the correct exposure for this image were as follows: ISO 200, f/2.8 0.8sec. Once the correct exposure is dialled in, I am able to trust that the camera is able to get the other two bracketed shots correct.
Composition and Filter
What I ultimately aim for is to create an atmosphere in my night street photography, and I find that this is achieved by using a Tiffen Black Pro-Mist ¼ filter on my lens. This little filter creates an atmospheric halation around any artificial light source. For the composition, I shot in portrait mode to frame this image as there wasn’t anything else around the subject that I needed to capture.
Focus
Most cameras these days are very good at autofocus even at night. My Sony camera is very good at this. I used AF-S (Single-shot AF) with the Wide Area Setting.
Editing
After I shot the image, in Photoshop, using layers, I blended the glow from the lamppost from the underexposed shot with the image detail from the overexposed shot and reduced the exposure, in order to create the final photograph. In Lightroom, I adjusted the Highlights, Shadows, Contrast, Vibrance and Clarity and added a slight tint.
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