Look around you. What do you see? If you answered light reflecting off of people, places and things, youʼre correctamundo.

Light reflects off and defines the shape of objects around us. Take away the light, and you see - nada, nothing, zilch (weʼre talking dark matter here folks, but not in the quantum sense).

Now, I love shooting at night time. Why? Simple. Everything takes on a “magical” quality because of the artificial light sources that society employs to illuminate their surroundings. The landscape and people are transformed by the shadows and light of neon, tungsten, LEDʼs and Sodium Vapor (ugh) lights that proliferate.

Also, night has an inherent drama and tends to sharpen and focus our attention to things and life around us. Absent the sunʼs broad illumination, (especially on a cloudy day), architectural lines become more defined and dramatic because we tend to use hard, very defined light sources to accentuate the aesthetic quality of structures and cityscapes.

Night People take on that “magical” quality too.

Skin tones, bone structure, clothing, can all be used to dramatic advantage at night time. Hard sources and light angles can sharpen features and heighten drama, while a Soft source, straight on, can play counter to the surrounding darkness and create a mystical effect (see below).

Use emʼ if you got emʼ

Back in the day; the “day” being when 8, 16 and 35mm acetate film was the only medium to shoot on, we were often limited by slower film speeds so were forced to “push” the ISO of the film by keeping it in the soup longer. This process essentially gained us another stop or two but also resulted in grain the size of “golf balls” when projected on the silvery screen. Definitely, not pretty!

With improved digital sensors, those days seem far behind us, and although there still is electronic (grain) noise to contend with, we would have killed, (metaphorically speaking), for the insane ISO speeds, (51K - wha?), available on some of todayʼs Digital DSLR cameras. This leap in technology gives us more opportunities to tell our stories with limited lighting resources and still produce striking images (see below).

Needing fewer, and smaller, light sources to paint your scene also means quicker setup time and a smaller, less obtrusive crew. An added bonus shooting at night is that itʼs supposed to be dark so definitely use shadows as part of your artistic palette. You only have to light whatʼs important to the emotional impact of the scene. And BURN THIS INTO YOUR HEAD, “shadows are just as important as whatʼs lit in your scene.” Sometimes more so.

Pics (above) depict a Focus Pull and re-framing for tension.

With night shooting, back-light or rim light is very important to keep your subject from being swallowed up by the dark. Traditionally this back or rim light was a focus-able hard source, spotted high and some distance away, directly behind or to the side of the subject(s). However, a soft source can be used closer in (see below).

Depending on the color temperature of the back/rim light, the character or scene can be manipulated to help convey the psychological tone youʼre going for in the scene. Here, I wanted to convey congeniality amongst the friends so I white balanced the camera at 3400 degrees kelvin for the fire and warm skin tones (see below).

I wanted that “friendship” warmth contrasted to the cool night evening, so I balanced my LED backlight to 6,000 degrees kelvin, knowing that this would illumine the smoky atmosphere to a “cinematic” blue as well as give a steely edge light to those gathered round the table (below). 

The smoke from the fire added to the atmospherics, softened the contrast and the warm (2400 degree kelvin) glow it gave off enriched the skin tones of the subjects.

A simple porch light, helped by adding some highlights to the hair while the surrounding darkness added a natural vignette.

This color balance was what I wanted for this scene and had the emotional tone I was going for.

The only light I added was a small 160 LED backlight. All the rest was natural, i.e. fire and porch light.

Hope this tip helps you in the pursuit of telling your story.