Application skills of light and color in night scene photography

Lead: Now many people like to shoot at night. Next, I will talk about the application skills of light and color in night shooting. Let's have a look!

Explanation: Small raindrops floating on the lens have produced unexpected effects on this long exposure trajectory.

It is necessary to make some supplementary explanations about creative night scenes.

Night photography mostly belongs to landscape photography of large scenes, and a small aperture to control the foreground and a clear depth of field is a necessary condition for landscape photography of most scenes. Landscape photography requires high photo quality, which determines that photographers should not use high sensitivity that impairs image quality. Taking pictures in dim light at night, in order to get graceful light and shadow, plus the above two prerequisites, you have to use a slow shutter. Small aperture, low sensitivity and slow speed determine that night photography needs stable equipment besides cameras. Yes, you need a reliable tripod.

In order to avoid advertising suspicion, we don't evaluate the performance, model and brand of tripod. A reliable tripod requires good stability, a high degree of foot tube fixation, and there is no gap between the tripod head and the tripod body that is easy to shake. In order to keep the camera extremely stable during operation, cable release is essential.

There is a hook design under the tripod, and camera bags or other heavy objects can be hung under it on windy nights to enhance the relative stillness of the tripod. Relativity here refers to the relativity of the subject. The reason why I want to repeat this sentence is because the humanoid overpass in the city is often not static. Although it can provide an excellent overlooking angle, it is not the best shooting position for night photography.

Overhead shooting is not the only angle of view for the night scene, so Chris Blizzard's composition adopts a slightly lower angle to shoot upwards. The angle of the flat shot is moderate, which is unnecessary at night, but it should be noted that traffic is often the element of the picture. When the viewing angle is flat, the light is easy to go straight into the lens, resulting in serious overexposure.

Car lights are a very good performance element of urban night scenes. Under the action of the slow door, it will be dragged out of the light and shadow lines, and the picture is full of motion. To express the traffic as vividly as lines, the choice of distance and angle is something that photographers should think deeply about. Observe the road track carefully before shooting.

Looking for a bright future, grass and the station are good foil, so we must be careful not to choose highlighted street lamps as the composition prospect. Strong light will enter the lens, causing the picture to be dark or covered by the color of the light source, even if the photographer uses a hood. Wide-angle lens and hood without dark angle are necessary equipment for surgery.

As far as color and exposure are concerned, night photography is technically important. To tell you the truth, I don't like Chris Blizzard's use of warm colors. Compared with the cold night scene shot in tungsten lamp white balance mode, it will be more peaceful. Shadow mode white balance will make the picture appear warm. This is a matter of personal preference for color. You will find a very interesting phenomenon. White balance photos will be cold in warm light mode; On the contrary, it is warmer, more specifically, the low color temperature is colder and the high color temperature is warmer. I mentioned in my last article that reverse thinking is an important feature of photography, and the principle of white balance is caused by the reverse compensation of color.

White balance drift

Is there another important color adjustment tool in digital camera? White balance drift. Yes. The white balance mode of the built-in menu can realize more specific coordinate adjustment by setting the colors as green, amber, blue, magenta and the mixture of the two colors. This is a great idea, because in the traditional era, photographers need to carry a lot of CC filters to change the tone of photos. The night scene shown below was taken with a film camera combined with a fluorescent mirror (FLD).

Of course, you can also choose to change after adding, but I think the tone of the post-adjustment is much less passionate than the harvest pleasure of the shooting scene.

The exposure of night scenes is different from conventional photography. Strictly speaking, there is no standard for accurate exposure of night scenes. Photographers should decide the brightness of the picture according to their own preferences. We can only say that high-brightness night photos are high-profile, and vice versa. For digital cameras, this is even simpler. Use the average metering mode (evaluation metering in Canon camera and 3D matrix metering in Nikon camera), set a smaller optical circle, and take the shutter read by the exposure meter as the detection standard. When the brightness is too high, increase the shutter speed, otherwise, increase the bright area by extending the exposure time.

For night scenes, a small aperture can not only provide enough depth of field to improve the clarity of photos, but also make the light source show a star-like effect, just like the photos shown at the beginning of this article. Under normal circumstances, the aperture of F 1 1 can achieve star glare, and the aperture will continue to shrink, and the star glare will become more and more obvious. It is not difficult to simulate this principle. Observing street lamps at night and squinting, you will find that the number of stars suddenly increases. If there is a high demand for starlight source, starlight mirror is essential for night photography.

Chris Blizzard's creative photography is very charming, and the water droplets left on the lens add too much vividness to the picture under the light, just like the finishing touch. You can try, but remember, the water drops should be on the UV mirror, not in front of the camera.