Sioux Center, IA

When the sun goes down and the classic "golden hour" has come and gone, many photographers may choose to put their camera away and call it a day. However, there are a plethora of opportunities that await the shot-seeker who is willing to step outside the bounds of the bright blessed day and experiment with the dark sacred night. With a little practice, one can bring the night alive and compose shots that would not be possible in the garish light of day.

Photographs are made by exposing light sensitive material to light for a determined amount of time. Essentially, in order to have a shot you need light, which is usually the sun in outdoor photography. However, when night rolls around a new light source is needed in order to produce a photograph. In the case of this shot, it was primarily the lights of a truck (yellows in upper left), stop light (green on right) and signs on buildings along the road. Even though lights along the road will cause you to squint while driving, they are not nearly so bright as Ra, which allows you to do longer exposure and produce unique shots. I believe this shot ended up coming to a 12 second exposure. The streaking of lines was done by placing my camera on the dashboard of my car while driving down the main street of Sioux Center Iowa.

The last thing that should be remembered while doing any sort of night shooting is to have a stable place to rest your camera. If the camera is not rested on something firm, everything will just turn hazy and there will be no definitive lines, which may work for a neat effect sometimes, but not usually. Also remember that your aperture should be set fairly small to avoid washing out the image with harsh lights from vehicles.