Have you ever tried to photograph the sun while it is rising in the morning, or setting in the evening? Maybe you have tried to take a picture of your child, spouse, a relative, or a friend on a beautiful evening with the sunset in the background. What do you get when you develop the pictures? Underexposure? Overexposure? The foreground is so dark that you cannot make out the faces? Lens flares all over the picture ruining it? Or, maybe you would like to photograph your city's skyline at night (see San Diego Bay Skyline in the figure 1 below)? In this article we will give you some tips that help you take better pictures.

Figure 1 - San Diego Skyline: If you've ever landed in Lindbergh field International airport at night, you have probably seen this view. This picture was taken from the south side of the Harbor Front Boulevard, across from the airport.

When taking photographs it is important to realize that an exact amount of light is needed to correctly expose the film with a given speed (ISO number 25, 50, 100, 200, 400, 800, and so on). The greater the ISO number the less light is required for a correct exposure. We will discuss various types of films separately. Therefore, you must have the aperture (f/stop number) and the shutter speed set such that allowing that exact amount of light to pass through the lens and expose your film. Since the required amount of light is constant, there is an inversely  proportional relationship between the aperture setting and the time period during which the shutter stays open. In other words, the smaller the aperture opening the longer the shutter stays open. On a sunny bright day you will not have any problems getting the required amount of light to expose the film. In fact, in most cases you either have to stop down the aperture and make the shutter open briefly, or cause some kind of open shade to take some of the brightness away. Bright daylight photography by itself requires lengthy discussion and is not the focus of this article. Let's focus on Low Light Photography situations including sunset, sunrise, and night photography.

Sunset or Sunrise: If you photograph a person or an object when the sun is rising or setting, usually you would want the sun behind your subject. The light from the sun acts as a light source and causes a backlighting situation. If the main subject is the sun and you don't care about the nearby objects or, you are only interested in a silhouette of your subject, your job is very simple (see figure 2 below). 

Figure 2 - An overall average reading of the scene caused the palm tree to become a silhouette.

Point the camera directly towards the sun and get a reading with your camera's internal light meter. Then, set the aperture and the shutter speed and shoot. Of course if you have an automatic camera, the correct aperture and shutter speed will be automatically set for you. When you directly shoot into a bright source of light such as the sun, most of the time you end up with lens flares on the picture. I'm talking about those pentagon or heptagon (depending on the number of blades in your aperture) shapes of different colors. Some people like those and call them special effects. Personally, no matter what you're shooting, I think lens flares take away from the photograph. If you have a point-and-shoot camera that does not allow you to alter the aperture and the shutter speed setting, you're out of luck (in this case you may want to call the lens flares special effects). However, if your camera allows you to change the setting, you can wide open the aperture and increase the shutter speed to compensate for the large aperture opening. Most of the time this technique helps you reduce the chance of getting lens flares all over you photographs. Getting over the lens flare problem, you only need a good composition with some interesting elements in the picture to get yourself a pleasing photograph. Look for horizontal lines of  clouds cutting through the sun, or large graceful birds such as pelicans flying in the scene,  and of course water in the foreground reflects the sunlight and gives added dimension to the picture. If you are interested in foreground silhouettes, there are many options. A person's or an animal's profile, various types of trees, man made objects such as bicycles, lattice work on a suspended bridge, and construction cranes are a few examples.

Figure 3 - The combination of the water in the foreground, the clouds, and the birds flying through the scene gives the photograph a serene and tranquil feeling

If you are interested in using the sunset or sunrise as a backdrop for your subject, you can use different techniques to avoid a backlighting silhouette effect. If you remember earlier in this article we said that you need an exact amount of light to correctly expose your film (the amount light required varies with the film speed). To add to this statement, photographic films can only record up to 3 f/stop of contrast. That means if you measure the contrast difference between the shadows (dark parts) and the highlights (bright parts) of a scene, for the same shutter speed the aperture setting should not vary more than 3 f/stops. Otherwise, you will have to sacrifice either the highlights or the shadows. If you shoot based on the reading from the highlights, the shadows would be underexposed and if you shoot based on the reading from the shadows, the highlights would be overexposed. If you get stuck in such situation and don't want to sacrifice neither the shadows nor the highlights, not to worry, you can either use a fill flash or a graduated neutral density filter. Most of the newer cameras have flash systems that take care of the fill flash setting for you.

What is a graduated neutral density filter? Click here to continue...

Back to

Color Spectrum Photography 

Home Page.