Night Shots

I enjoyed watching other peoples’ shot taken in late afternoon or night. I was reading a lot about this theme and I knew I did not have any chance to take nice shots without a tripod. I bought a tripod and there were nothing, what would stop me going to take photos.

In the articles, I found an often-mentioned phrase named as “blue hour”. Blue hour is the end of the afternoon or the beginning of the night, when the sky has wonderful blue color. According to other articles, the sky has many colors from the red to the blue color. Then what is the blue hour? Honestly, I have no idea. I do not know, but it does not have a real meaning. I will explain why a bit later.

Well, I grabbed my camera and went out to the street at about 7PM. I found an interesting subject, the building of the parliament and set up my tripod. There was nothing to do just to wait for the blue hour.

I decided to take shots during waiting. It was a very good decision, because while I was busy with settings of my camera, I realized the color of the sky was changing in every second. Some minutes later, I realized that car owners switched on headlights and the street lamps started to work.

I was taking photos, as many as I could, the lights and the colors was changing permanently. I do not know if the blue hour arrived or not. I was too busy to listen to it.

I can suggest you to take photos when you see the subject is beautiful and do not care of the blue hour. However, you must hurry because the lights and the colors of the sky changes very quickly. You do not have second chance. If you miss something, then you must come next day to compensate your failure.

It is worth to use small aperture (the biggest value), then the lights radiating from the lamps look like a stars. Usage of big aperture size convert sthe light of the lamps into a ball.

I mentioned in the previous post that I preferred AV mode of the camera. This case the AV mode is not the best solution. It worked well until it did not become very late. Later, my camera could not find the proper shutter time related to the selected aperture size. The capture remained very dark. The best solution for the night shots is the manual mode. You probably use tripod, so the settings can be done easy, as you can use both your hands.

On the first day, the sky was deep blue on my shots. Later, I can capture the sky having reddish and bluish tones. They were beautiful, also. As I mentioned the colors of the sky would change permanently. But, do not forget, any light is essential to take shots. If your photos remain hopelessly dark, then you have to find a lighter object with lamps. Alternatively, maybe, it is the time to finish taking shot for today. The black sky does not look nice on the photos, even with awesome floodlit building. You will know when the day will end. :)

I like some abstract photos. Playing with the lights and the part of the building makes excellent conditions to take such shots.