Night photography has the ability to take a scene and cast it in an unusual light-- much like the "golden hour" surrounding sunrise and sunset can add an element of mood and uniqueness to a sunlit scene. Just as how sports and landscape photography push the camera's limits for shutter speed and aperture, respectively, night photography often demands technical extremes in both.
Twilight is a magical time. Just because the Sun is down, doesn’t mean you should put away your camera. When the Sun sets, a different looking world exists for photographers. Colors don’t appear the way they do in daylight. Instead, colors display based on your camera’s white balance setting and how that setting matches the various light sources in your scene.
You can photograph many different things outdoors at night, so don't put your camera away just because the sun is gone for the day. Light sources (street lights, automobile lights, neon signs, or fires) or brightly lit areas (illuminated buildings or areas under street lights) will dominate pictures at night because they stand out strongly against darker backgrounds.
Whether you’re using an expensive SLR, a digital point-and-shoot camera, or a cell phone, you’ll take much better photos when you learn more about lighting and your camera.
Taking photos with a flash often gives ugly results. Washed-out, flat, phony-looking faces with monstrous makeup can ruin your memories of any special occasion. Everything else is so dark it’s useless. Here’s how to take great, natural-looking portraits and photos in low or very low light.
This video shows you how to photograph stars without doing a long exposure and to avoid human error by listening to what the camera meter says. This video is for D-SLR's only. Watch another video for star trails using a 35mm film.
This video demonstrates you how to take an excellent close up photograph of the Earth's Moon without a name - also demonstrates you how to develop the RAW (or NEF) files in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom (We use the original LR in this tutorial but similar results in LR 2) and Adobe Photoshop CS3 (similar results in CS4). Enjoy!