Street Photography at Night

There’s something about shooting street photography at night that makes you completely rethink the way you do photography. You no longer have all of the light and color that the day usually provides, so you’re forced to change the way you look for subjects, compose your images, and how you use your camera. There’s a lot you can learn and takeaway from shooting at night, especially if you’re someone like me who mostly shoots during the day.

Gear & Preparation

There’s a common misconception that you need certain gear to shoot at night. Maybe it’s a full frame camera, or a camera with good ISO performance, or a lens that opens up very wide. While some of these things can improve the experience to some extent, it’s not necessarily needed to take good photos at night.

I frequently use the X100V and it’s camera that doesn’t exactly have the best reputation when it comes to low light photography. It’s a crop-sensor camera with a lens that opens up to only f/2, but you’ll see that it’s perfectly suitable to get good photos during the night.

Here are some sample images with the X100V at night.

If there’s one thing I can recommend for shooting at night it’s to just keep it simple. Bring one camera and one lens. You don’t want to be constantly rotating through gear while you’re out at night, especially if you’re shooting alone.

On a related note, a little preparation can go a long way for night photography. This can go as far as researching and looking up potential scenes in the area you’re about to shoot in or even shooting in the same place, but during the day time just to familiarize yourself with the environment.

Wherever you’re about to shoot at night it helps to have some kind of background knowledge of the area because, come nightfall, it’s a lot more difficult to navigate and feel your surroundings.

In this video, I was shooting in my hometown of Boston, but I still planned a few shots that I had in mind. This helps jump start your night of shooting and garuntees you don’t come out empty handed.

Settings

I think it’s easy to freak out about higher ISOs when shooting at night, especially if you use something like an X100V, a crop sensor camera which isn’t exactly bringing in a lot of light to begin with. Before you freak out, I would first make sure your aperture and shutter speed are set to something you’re comfortable with.

Typically I’ll go as wide as possible which is f/2 on the X100V and keep my shutter speed to 1/100 or lower. I try to be careful about going too low with the shutter speed otherwise you’ll start to introduce some motion blur into your photos, but that’s not so say there’s anything wrong with that. It’s really all about intention, and I’ll talk more about intentional motion blur later on in this.

Just as you should embrace shooting at a slower pace, you should also embrace the impurities that shooting at night brings, that includes the noise from using higher ISOs.

I always find that the noise from using high ISOs almost acts like a film grain and adds to that cinematic element to night photos, and that’s usually the kind of vibe I want from night photos to begin with.

I’ll go up all the way up to 6,400 ISO on the X100V if I have to. But usually I’ll try and use as low of an ISO as the scene allows me to do. At the end of the day, don’t be afraid of using these higher ISOs if the scene calls for it. I would make sure you’re shooting in RAW that way you have more control over the exposure and white balance in your image.

Images taken in lowlight especially taken with a crop sensor camera can be difficult to edit with, so I would avoid shooting in JPEG at night.

Something I’ve found to always work for me with night photos is a black and white edit. When all else fails, be it the weird color casts from lights, or really bad looking noise, a black and white edit can fix almost 90% of all of those issues.

I actually tend to think in black and white terms while shooting at night because of this, but it’s worth knowing that your photo will still come out looking nice as a black and white image. I also find that the noise produced from high ISOs always looks more natural as a film grain when it’s a black and white images.

Slowing Down

I don’t shoot at night that often, but I’ve always admired how much it slows down the process of street photography for me.

Naturally, things slow down at night. There’s less people about so there’s less action to photograph.

That leads you to be a little more observant than you normally would be during the day because what to photograph isn’t as obvious at night.

You might realize that a fast auto-focus isn’t really needed during this time of day and that a slightly out of focus image is perfectly fine at night. You’ll also find yourself mostly “fishing” for subjects to walk into your pre-composed photos.

If you struggle shooting at night you should really take advantage of this technique. For one, fishing around for a subject to come into frame let’s you take the time to get your composition right beforehand, all of the settings can be set in place and it’s just a matter of waiting on someone to complete your photo.

It’s also a lot more inconspicuous, and that goes a long way when shooting at night since most people are more conscious of their surroundings and are more high alert. I utilize this technique almost 80% of the time.

One things for certain though. You’ll want to embrace this slower pace of shooting at night because if you try to push it away and continue to run around with your camera, you’ll find yourself frustrated and disappointed with the photos you take.

Light

The most common tip you’ll hear when it comes to night photography is “follow the light”

Now that sounds pretty obvious because light sources around the city will be the main determining factor for pretty much all of your photos, but not a lot is said about how you can use this light at night, which is pretty different than how we would normally use light during the day.

*Shoot into light sources. They will easily frame your subject.*

The first and probably most obvious way of using light at night is shooting into that light, or maybe in this instance into the buildings that produce most of the light during the night.

I’d be really careful when doing this, though. Like I said before, it’s night time so people are a lot more on edge and possibly less understanding of what you’re doing.

Do not be that creep peering into people’s homes with a camera unless you want the police called on you. So please just use common sense and respect people’s privacy. Personally I’ll only do this if it’s something like a restaurant, a bus, or a laundromat. Some kind of building where there’s large windows and people inside kind of expect people to see them.

The other ways you can use light at night is as a spotlight or backlight for your subject. These are probably the two most common ways you’ll end up using light at night.

You can use light as a spotlight where light is coming from a building and illuminating a side walk. People will get illuminated by these lights as they pass by.

You can change the angle of where you’re shooting and use the light from the building as a backlight to people walking in front of it as well. This will create a more abstract silhouette of people passing by.

Lastly, light at night acts in strange ways. Light coming from different places are just so much more pronounced because it’s night and so there’s a beautiful essence that comes from it. Look for light in reflections, be-it from a puddle on the ground, windows, or light bouncing off a building. On a related note, shadows casted on light during the night has a unique look to it as well. All in all, light and shadow at night acts in ways that cannot be replicated during the day, so have fun experimenting with it.

Experimentation

Now if you’re like me, and shooting at night isn’t something you usually do, then it’s a great time to experiment and continue to do things you normally don’t do with your photography.

In the past I’ve experimented with double exposure photography as well as implementing motion blur into my street photography. These are two things you can also carry over into your night photography and they make for very unique looking images.

Intentional motion blur at night is very fun to play with. Lower your shutter speed past 1/50th of a second. You might have to go even lower, so play around with this until you’re getting the amount of motion blur you want.

As you do this you will also want to increase your aperture since you’re bringing in a lot more light with the lower shutter speed.

If you incorporate subjects that are also motion, you can get some pretty interesting photos that you can’t really replicate in the day.

If you’ve never done something like this I would highly recommend it. It will put you out of your comfort zone and when you do that, you force yourself to work a little harder to achieve a photo you like. That process can be really beneficial to your growth as a photographer.

Safety

Lastly I want to talk about empathy and safety as it relates to shooting street photography at night.

Your safety comes first before anything, and that’s important to remember that because we all become more vunerable at night. That includes the people walking at night as well as yourself. Our sense of surroundings isn’t as good at night and since there aren’t as many people out, you stick out a lot more especially with camera gear.

There’s no photo that’s worth losing your gear over, or even worse, getting hurt over, so whatever you do, make sure you’re staying aware of your surroundings and where you are while you’re out taking photos. And remember to be respectful to other people, but that should go without saying.

I’d advise leaving the headphones behind, or do what I do and just wear them with nothing playing. I always find people looking for trouble are less inclined to bother you if it looks like you can’t hear them.

Before you head out you should also tell someone close to you that you’ll be heading out to take photos, that way at least someone knows where you’ve gone. Or, even better, bring someone along with you. Ideally another photographer.

I don’t want to scare any of you, it’s just better to be safe than sorry!

Closing Thoughts

So those are my thoughts on night street photography. It’s something I don’t do all that often, but I personally want to do a little more of. It’s a very different experience and approach compared to shooting in the day, but I find that change in the process is beneficial.

If you’ve never shot during the night, I’d say try it out and bring a friend with you. Start with shooting in a busy place at night, maybe it’s the center of town, that way there will be less stress and worry.

If you have any night related questions for me, feel free to drop them below in the comments section or in the comments section of my YouTube video!