Five Questions: Great Smoky Mountains, Zion, Bryce, Black and White Printing, and More

You ask questions, we give answers. (And then you ask more questions, and we give more answers. Let’s keep the conversation rollin’!)

This installment of our “Five Questions” series features inquiries about camera choice, Lightroom’s Dehaze feature, file settings for black and white printing, and location info at Great Smoky Mountains, Bryce Canyon and Zion national parks.

If you have any questions you would like to throw our way, please contact us anytime. Questions could be about gear, national parks or other photo locations, post-processing techniques, field etiquette, or anything else related to night photography. #SeizeTheNight!

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1. Great Smoky Mountains Closed at Night?

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Cades Cove, Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Nikon D850 with a Sigma 35mm f/1.4 Art lens. 30 seconds, f/5.6, ISO 64. © 2018 Matt Hill.

Q: Your Smoky Mountains National Park workshop looks interesting, but isn’t the park closed at night? I once tried to get in before dawn and the gate was locked. — Linda

A: Yes, the workshop will be both interesting and fun. (Promise!)

Great Smoky Mountains is usually open 24/7/365.25. But there’s a caveat. You may have been trying to enter Cades Cove—one of the most popular destinations at GSM. The gates at the beginning of that 11-mile loop road are closed at dusk and opened at dawn. But that is only to keep motorvehicles out; visitors can park nearby and walk or bike through Cades Cove anytime.

In fact, we will be going into Cades Cove twice during our workshop. The first time will be on foot. We’ll saunter a comfortable walking distance, which still offers plenty of shooting opportunities, such as the horse meadow, Sparks Lane, the Carter Shields Cabin and the Oliver Cabin. Our second jaunt into Cades Cove will be as an add-on opportunity that will avail the entire loop road to us.

Night photography in Cades Cove can be a blast, and is worth venturing into for sure. You’ll find amazing sky views, as well as loads to light paint. — Matt

Note: We still have a few spots open for our Great Smoky Mountains workshop this spring. Interested? Click here!

2. Missing dehaze

Q: How come my Lightroom 6 does not have the Dehaze slider? Are there any add-ons to LR that have the same quality Dehaze function that I can use?  — Bailing L.

A: The reason Dehaze slider isn't showing up for you in Lightroom 6 is because the feature wasn't added until the next version of the software, which was when the subscription-only model of Lightroom Creative Cloud was launched. In fact, Dehaze was the major feature added to the program right after launch to entice more people to sign up.

And I gotta say, while I’m not a fan of the subscription-only model, there’s an argument to be made that the Dehaze feature alone is worth the upgrade. It's an amazing tool with a lot of ancillary uses. One such application is to make starry skies and the Milky Way “pop,” as can be seen in this blog post by Tim.

If you don’t want to upgrade, there is one alternative that I’ve heard about, but I’ve never tested it: Prolost Dehaze. If you take it for a spin, please let us know how it works out for you. — Chris

3. Things to Shoot in Zion and Bryce

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The Amphitheater at dusk, Bryce Canyon National Park. Fuji X-T2 with a 10-24mm f/4 lens at 10mm. 3 seconds, f/7.1, ISO 200. © 2018 Tim Cooper.

Q: I’ve already booked hotels for your Valley of Fire and Grand Canyon workshops. So excited! While in the region, I'm thinking about hitting Bryce Canyon and Zion. Do you have any advice about good areas to shoot without 4-mile hikes? — Julianne K.

A: There’s a ton to see and shoot at both parks without having to hit long trails.

In Zion, be sure to drive into the main canyon and also up through the tunnel toward Checkerboard Mesa. Stop at any pullout along these roads and enjoy the incredible scenery! You can’t miss.

For short walks in Zion I recommend:

• Weeping Rock and the trails around it

• Temple of Sinawava and the trail to The Narrows (though not into The Narrows, as that’s a more serious endeavor)

• the area near the bridge that crosses Pine Creek

At Bryce, any viewpoints along the 15-mile road offer awesome overlooks of the canyon. Think sunrise for these viewpoints (especially Sunrise Point).

Middle-of-the-day shooting is better when you hike down a bit below the rim. Check out Navajo Loop Trail and Queens Garden Trail. No need to hike the entire loop of either, but just going down a little will get you into some terrific scenery! — Tim

Note: Due to a cancellation, a spot just opened up for our Bryce Canyon workshop this summer. Interested? Click here!

4. Choice for Multipurpose Camera

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Q: I have two specific photography interests—night and underwater. I’ve been using a Canon 5D Mark III for night photography and time-lapse. I also use a Nikon D7000 for underwater. I’m planning to replace the D7000 with a higher-resolution camera, hopefully one that I can use for both underwater and night photography. My options are to buy an underwater housing and lenses for the 5D Mark II, or stay with a DX-format (Nikon D500) with a new housing, or go with something else like a Nikon D850. I would like to get to the point where I am using Nikon or Canon, not both. Which camera would you recommend to meet my needs? — Richard R.

A: Camera choice is a personal decision, and there are lots of factors to consider. I have yet to find the perfect camera, or one that offers everything I’m looking for in one package.

Given that you have Canon glass for full-frame cameras, I’d concentrate on comparing the 5D Mark IV to the D850. I think the Mark IV is the best camera Canon has ever made, and the first one that surpasses the 6D for high ISO night photography. The D850 is an awesome camera, but if you use live view focusing at night, I’d probably go with the Mark IV, especially if you have a number of L lenses. Why not rent them both and see which feels better?

The D500 is certainly a capable camera, but if you can afford to go full-frame, I think you’ll be happier that way. If you favor wide lenses, definitely go full-frame; if you tend to shoot long, then the D500 might be a better choice. — Lance

5. Image Settings for Printing in Black and White

Q: I sent a black and white image from the Sloss Furnaces workshop to Bay Photo to have printed for the NPAN exhibit there. I converted to black and white in Lightroom, exported to Photoshop for star stacking, flattened, and then brought the file back in to Lightroom. But Bay Photo is telling me that the image is not in the correct format—that instead of grayscale it needs to be converted back to RGB to make a black and white print. So I then tried keeping the photo in color and just dropping Saturation and Hue to 0 to create a black and white image “in color,” but that washed out the shadows. I’m lost here. Any suggestions or insight? — Martha H.

A: Very cool that you’ll be participating in the exhibit! This is the third park that our workshop attendees will have a show in. It will be running April 1 to June 1 at the Sloss Furnaces visitor center.

As for your question: In short, any file that is sent to a printer should be an RGB image, not grayscale. Even if you convert an image to black and while in Lightroom, it still sends an RGB image over to Photoshop. Below is a screenshot of an image that I converted to black and white in Lightroom and then sent to Photoshop. If I go to Image > Mode, you can see that the file is a 16-bit RGB image. This is normal and the way it should be.

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The difference? An RGB image can be black and white, or it can be color. A grayscale image can only be black and white. My guess is that you did something in Photoshop to convert it, intentionally or not.

To fix the problem for Bay Photo:

1. Reopen that image in Photoshop (from Lightroom, choose Photo > Edit In > Edit in Adobe Photoshop CC 2019).

2. Go to Image > Mode, and click on RGB Color.

3. Save the file.

Now when you export the image from Lightroom, you will create a JPG in RGB. — Tim

Chris Nicholson is a partner and workshop leader with National Parks at Night, and author of Photographing National Parks (Sidelight Books, 2015). Learn more about national parks as photography destinations, subscribe to Chris' free e-newsletter, and more at www.PhotographingNationalParks.com.

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UPCOMING WORKSHOPS FROM NATIONAL PARKS AT NIGHT

How I Got the Shot: Stars and a Rock in Lassen Volcanic

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Lassen Volcanic National Park. © 2018 Chris Nicholson. Nikon D5 with a Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 lens, light painted with a Coast HP7R flashlight. 25 seconds, f/2.8, ISO 6400.

The Location

Last summer, Lance and I visited Lassen Volcanic National Park to shoot for a few days (er, nights). For both of us, it was our first time there, and we quickly discovered that this Northern California wilderness is one of the best kept secrets of the national park system. The scenery is beautiful, bewildering and varied: volcanoes of different types and shapes, snowcapped peaks, reflecting lakes, babbling brooks, lush meadows, multicolor pumice fields, steaming geothermals and more await photographers and their cameras. Not to mention … deliciously dark skies.

On our second day in the park, we stopped at a visitor center to talk to a ranger about possible places to photograph in the dark. She gave us a lot of great information, including an auto-tour map with suggested sites to see, and she marked the areas that she thought would be of interest to us. We ventured out for our daytime scouting, driving the main road (the aptly named Lassen National Park Highway), hiking short trails, making daytime photos (gasp!) and all-in-all enjoying the experience of being in the outdoors in such a captivating space.

Along the way we stopped at a trailhead parking lot that afforded a 360-degree view of mountain peaks and valleys, all with great visual lines to the sky above them—i.e., no trees, cliffs and so on that would block our sky views in any direction. In other words, it was a perfect place to set up for a night shoot. And then we spotted what turned out to be the star of the scene: a massive boulder perched at the edge of a cliff.

A scouting photo of the boulder.

We were both pretty excited about the rock as a subject, as it has an interesting shape, is in an interesting place visually, is in front of an interesting background from all available angles, and we could safely set up and shoot from about 180 degrees around it. In other words, this was going to be a lot of fun.

Moreover, because the cliff faces south, we knew we could get the Milky Way galactic core in the composition. So we pulled out PhotoPills to see exactly when and where the Milky Way would appear, planned our shots, and then continued exploring the park with the knowledge that we would definitely return to this spot after sundown.

The Shoot

We arrived back at our shoot location early in twilight—so early that we couldn’t see the Milky Way yet, but that was fine because we were surrounded by many other creative opportunities. Lance ventured a little east on the cliff edge to work on a separate idea with a twisted tree, and I stationed a camera at the far end of the parking lot to rip some longish exposures over the mountain ridge to the west (Figure 1).

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Figure 1. Star trails over a Lassen ridge. Nikon D850 with a Nikon 80-200mm f/2.8 lens. 6 minutes, f/6.3, ISO 64.

As the sky grew darker, I started working with the boulder. The Milky Way was not yet apparent in the sky, so I worked on some alternative compositions with the mountains in the background, using the silhouette of the distant ridge as a leading line into the rock (Figure 2).

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Figure 2. Nikon D5 with a Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 lens. 15 seconds, f/8, ISO 4000.

Once I was done with that, I looked south, and there it was: the galactic core rising over the valley. So I repositioned my camera and tripod to start working on the photo I was there to create.

The valley below the cliff is a scenic wonder in daylight (in moonlight too), but in pitch-dark it was just vast blackness—so I lowered my tripod to get it out of the frame (Figure 3). The real stars of the composition were the Milky Way and the boulder.

Figure 3. Working on the composition, but with a poor-choice white balance of Daylight.

I worked the composition a little more, and then changed my white balance. I’d been using Daylight during the blue hour portion of the shoot, but once the sky darkened, I wanted a white balance that would help the sky look more like “night” and that would also help draw out the delicate colors of the Milky Way. So I switched the white balance of my D5 to manual and dialed it in to 3800 K (Figure 4). (For more on this, see Matt’s blog post “How to Choose the Right White Balance for Night Skies.”)

Figure 4. White balance at 3800 K.

At this point you can see that Lance was in the background doing his light painting on a different subject. This didn’t bother me. First, I was only making test shots. I didn’t care about someone else’s light; I cared only about the specific elements that I was testing for, i.e. composition, focus, exposure, white balance, etc. Second, once I was ready to start executing my “real” image, I knew Lance and I could communicate and take turns light painting our different setups, and that when his flashlight was off, he and his camera would disappear into the shadows.

For focus, a quick check of a hyperfocal distance chart confirmed that I could lock in on the boulder and still have the stars sharp. So I shined my Coast on the rock and auto-focused. Easy peasy.

The exposure was pretty simple too. I knew I wanted sharp stars for a sharp Milky Way. Using the 400 Rule with a 14mm focal length, that gave me a top shutter speed of 25 seconds (400 / 14 = 28.57, rounded down to 25 for safety), which I shot at f/2.8 and ISO 6400.

Then I started working on the light painting. Using a Coast HP7R flashlight with a homemade color-warming filter, I worked from the left of the frame. I chose this angle for three reasons:

1. Working from the right was nearly impossible because of the cliff drop. I could have done it if I learned how to fly, but I didn’t have time for that in the middle of the shoot.

2. When light painting, I usually want the direction of the added light to “make sense” visually, to almost look like the illumination could be coming from something else in the scene—in this case, the galactic core. Of course no one will think that the Milky Way was actually bright enough to illuminate the boulder, but I find that the visual suggestion of it works better.

3. When light-painting a subject on the right side of the composition, I usually like to have the light coming from the left, across the majority of the frame. (And vice-versa for a subject on the left.) If I’d painted from the other side (Figure 5), then the brightest, highest-contrast parts of the boulder would have been way over on the right edge of the frame, separated from the secondary subject of the image (the Milky Way) by a large shadow. That would have been far less compositionally effective. (This is a personal guideline, and an effective one. But it’s not a rule. In fact, you can see that I went against this guideline in the image above of the boulder without the Milky Way.)

Figure 5. I moved as close to the edge of the cliff as I could to light paint from camera-right, and the result proved the efficacy having the light come across the majority of frame. Also, it was nearly impossible to paint from that angle without having the light hit the sapling too.

The final step was just a matter of playing around with the light painting, trialing-and-erroring, repeatedly coming back to the LCD to review my results. I was evaluating factors such as:

• how out far out of the frame I needed to stand so the camera couldn’t see the flashlight

• whether to use direct light (harder, more contrast) or reflected (softer, less contrast)

• which angle to paint from to create the most texture

• which angle would illuminate enough of the boulder to be interesting but not so much that I was light painting everything (which is boring)

• which angle accomplished all that without lighting the sapling to the right of the rock, which I deemed a compositional distraction

• how long to keep the light on so the boulder would be bright enough to draw interest yet subtle enough to not be garish or overwhelming

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Failed iterations of my light painting approach. Or, rather, honing by trial and error.

Once I’d made all of my decisions, I was ready to make the final photograph. By that point Lance had joined me at the boulder, and we took turns light painting our individual setups. Again, the key was communication, so that we didn’t inadvertently ruin each other’s images—each of us asking if the other was in the middle of an exposure before turning our flashlights on.

I loved how everything came together. One of my field rules is that when I finish executing my idea, before changing the setup I always try something I wasn’t planning, just to push myself out of the immediate box and see if I stumble across a great idea. In this case, I tried backlighting the rock (Figure 6). I hated it—so I moved on. …

Figure 6. The failed backlighting idea.

Incidentally, while I was doing all of this, I still had my second camera, a D850, capturing star trails from the top of the hill, creating the image in Figure 7. That’s a great use for having two cameras in the field—one for long exposures and one for doing other work during the wait.

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Figure 7. Star trails over Lassen Peak. Nikon D850 with a Nikon 80-200mm f/2.8 lens. 13 minutes, f/2.8, ISO 160.

The Post-Production

This particular photography didn’t need a lot of work in post.

I cropped out the bright star that was sitting immediately on the right edge of the frame, where it served as only a visual distraction, pulling attention far away from both the primary and secondary subjects.

Using the Spot Removal tool, I cloned out a patch of snow that was picking up just enough light to be seen in the background, as well as one bright and three faint plane trails (Figure 8).

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Figure 8.

I boosted Exposure (+20) and Whites (+34) to increase overall brightness, then Clarity (+19), Dehaze (+24) and Vibrance (+8) to add some punch to the sky (Figure 9).

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Figure 9.

Usually I’ll go over the galactic core with a custom Milky Way brush, but I didn’t think this image needed it. Sometimes not doing something is the best decision.

Figure 10.

The Final Adjustment

The last correction was one I couldn’t make by myself. The combination of using a CTO filter and shooting with a white balance of 3800 K made the light kind of green. I’m red-green color blind, so I asked Tim if he’d be a second (better) set of eyes while I tried to get the color of the rock accurate. Using the targeted adjustment tool in the Hue section of the HSL panel, we clicked a green sample in the rock and dragged down, which brought the Yellow slider to -69 and the Green to -80. The rock was then a little too warm, so we manually pulled Red down to -20. (Figure 10.)

There are two lessons here:

1. Knowing how to work around your limitations can be critical. Much thanks to Tim, my sister Ann and several past girlfriends for helping me color-correct through the years.

2. In the field, knowing my limitations and when shooting at a non-Daylight white balance, I should have used a Luxli Viola LED panel for the painting. Why? Because that would have allowed me to dial in the color temperature of the light to 3800 K or slightly warmer—then I would have known the color was accurate even if I can’t see it. (Another way to do this is to use a combination of color-correcting gels to alter the Coast’s output accordingly. Check out Tim’s post “Level Up With Light Painting: Correcting the Color of Your Flashlight (Part II).”)

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Figure 11. The final image.

Wrapping Up

I finished my photo before Lance finished his. I tooled around with a few other image ideas in the same area (Figures 12 and 13), but soon settled on light painting Lance while he worked, creating a portrait of one night photography’s true masters in his element (Figure 14). By this time the moon had risen, which illuminated the valley in the background, adding more of a sense of place to the scene.

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Figure 12. Tail end of the Milky Way over Lassen Peak. Nikon D5 with a Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 lens. 20 seconds, f/2.8, ISO 8000.

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Figure 13. Milky Way disappearing in the moonrise. Nikon D5 with a Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 lens. 25 seconds, f/2.8, ISO 6400.

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Figure 14. Lance at work. Nikon D5 with a Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 lens, light painted with a Coast HP7R flashlight and a Luxli Viola LED panel. 25 seconds, f/2.8, ISO 6400.

Afterward we moved on to our second shoot location of the night, a placid alpine lake just up the road, where we ripped some long exposures of star-circle reflections above Lassen Peak.

Lassen Volcanic is truly an extraordinary national park. I have no idea when I’ll be back, but the day I am can’t come soon enough.

Want to explore Lassen Volcanic with Lance and Gabe on an epic night photography adventure workshop this August? Sign up here!

Chris Nicholson is a partner and workshop leader with National Parks at Night, and author of Photographing National Parks (Sidelight Books, 2015). Learn more about national parks as photography destinations, subscribe to Chris' free e-newsletter, and more at www.PhotographingNationalParks.com.

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UPCOMING WORKSHOPS FROM NATIONAL PARKS AT NIGHT

Wonders of Workflow: How Consistency Will Improve Your Night Photography

In my 20 years of teaching night photography, there is one thing I’ve found that can make a huge difference in both the consistency and quality of your images, as well as reducing your frustration and increasing your enjoyment in the field. It’s not glamorous, it’s not sexy, but it will make you a better photographer.

You’ve probably heard the term “mindfulness” before. Before you roll your eyes and click off of this page, be assured that I’m not going to get all spiritual and New Agey on you. Hear me out.

As the website Mindful.org defines it, “Mindfulness is the basic human ability to be fully present, aware of where we are and what we’re doing, and not overly reactive or overwhelmed by what’s going on around us.”

Being present. Focused. Intentional. It’s a  simple concept, but one that many of us find increasingly difficult in today’s chaotic, digitally “enhanced” world. It’s certainly something I struggle with. But I promise, it will make you a better night photographer.

How to be Mindful at Night

There are numerous ways to apply the concept of mindfulness to photography, from the way you observe the world to the way you edit your images, but what I’m suggesting here has to do with your workflow.

We tend to think of workflow as beginning when we download our images, but really it begins when you decide to go out and photograph. Every little decision that we make—or don’t make—impacts everything that comes afterward. If you have a checklist, and if you go over it before you head out to make images, then you will always have the gear you need, your batteries will always be fully charged, and you will never waste amazing images because you accidentally shot with image quality set to “JPG Small” at ISO 1,000,000.

“Some people are more naturally inclined to working methodically, while others require intense effort to discipline themselves. Whichever category you fall under, I promise that it’s worth the effort.”

Perhaps the most important thing I teach during night photography workshops is that everyone should consciously develop their own field workflow. By this, I simply mean creating a sequence of repeatable steps that you do every time you set out for a location, and every time you push the shutter release. Doing so means that a much higher percentage of your images will end up being keepers, and that you will be able to see more clearly what worked and what didn’t in your shoots. Some people are more naturally inclined to working methodically, while others require intense effort to discipline themselves. Whichever category you fall under, I promise that it’s worth the effort.

With that in mind, I’m going to share my workflow with you. But I’m not trying to get you to do what I do. Rather, I’m sharing it as an example with hope that it will help you develop your own working methods that get you the results that you are looking for. Each of us at NPAN has our own procedure that we follow. There isn’t a right or a wrong way to do this—the key is to figure out what works for you.

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Field Workflow Example 1: Duxbury, Massachusetts. Building a night image from beginning to end, marching through the same steps time after time.

Before You Go

Because I travel frequently, I don’t always keep the same gear in my bag—moreover, I don’t always even work out of the same bag from one trip to the next. So it would be easy for me to find myself on location without an essential piece of gear and not even realize my error until right when I need it. And this is why I always check my kit before leaving home.

When I’m planning a shoot, I consider what the lighting conditions will be, the type of subject matter I’ll be shooting, the weather conditions, and if I’ll be working close to a vehicle or hiking some distance to my location. Each of these factors dictates what I bring with me––not just in the camera bag, but also accessories like clothing, food and drink, and whether I’ll be better served by a backpack or shoulder bag.

Step 1: Pre-Shoot Scouting

Research location if it is unfamiliar. Scout ahead of time if possible. Check for access/trespassing/permit/safety issues. Use PhotoPills to access celestial conditions and possible shot locations if appropriate. Look at the Google Earth view of the location, as well as night images available online. When is the best time of year, or the best part of the lunar cycle for the location? How about parking?

Step 2: Gear Selection

Choose a bag, camera(s) and lenses based on location. Pack camera batteries only after making sure they are fully charged. Make sure rechargeables are recharged, and include some disposable batteries as needed. Choose light sources for light painting, as well as light modifiers such as snoots and gobos. Check accessories: tripod, an extra tripod plate and tools, intervalometer with fresh batteries, filters, hand warmers, water bottle, snack, phone, phone charging cable, hat, gloves, extra layers as needed.

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Field Workflow Example 2: Orkney, Scotland.

On Location

Step 3: On-Site Scouting

Arrive before dark if possible, explore the site and consider possible shots. How will the light change? What conditions are likely to impact photography? Are there likely to be other people, or other photographers? How about street lights or traffic? Are you under a busy flight path? Formulate a plan.

Step 4: Field Workflow

The order in which you do the following steps is up to you. I suggest experimenting with the sequence to see what feels right. The following is what I do––for every image.

A. Compose the shot. Without any regard for exposure or focus at this point, I roughly work out the composition. If there is enough light, I’ll do some quick hand-held high ISO shots just to see if the idea is going to work. If I need more than 2 to 3 seconds to get an exposure, I’ll go right to the tripod. It doesn’t matter if the lens is focused—I’m concerned only with framing the image. How do the foreground, middleground and background relate to each other? How does the subject fit within the frame? I’ll make multiple exposures, making little adjustments until the composition is perfect. It might take two or threeframes, it might take a dozen. Once I get to this point, I lock the camera down on the tripod, and I don’t move it until the image is completed.

B. Focus. Depending on the situation, I might use one of several different focusing techniques. If it’s an astro-landscape image with nothing in the foreground, I’ll focus at infinity for maximum sharpness of the stars. If there is an important foreground element, I’ll determine the hyperfocal distance to maximize the depth of field. I almost always use magnified live view combined with a flashlight for accuracy. (You can read more about focusing techniques in Chris’ post “Staying Sharp: 8 Ways to Focus in the Dark.”)

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Field Workflow Example 3: Ryholite ghost town, Nevada.

C. Determine the exposure. Once the composition is set and focus is achieved, I turn to finding the ideal exposure. As before, the type of image will give me a clue as to the starting point. If I’m going for star points, then I’ll start with shutter speed, using the longest speed that will still render the stars as points of light rather than as trails. (I wrote two posts on this subject in 2017. Part one deals with subtleties of managing different variables to determine the best exposure for maintaining star points in astro-landscape photographs; part two explains the 250, 400 and 500 rules for calculating the best shutter speed for the conditions at hand.)

If I’m more concerned with depth of field than star points, I might start with aperture, and build the rest of the exposure around that. ISO is rarely the starting point of an exposure.

Regardless of my starting point, I’ll use the histogram as a guide to get the exposure where it needs to be. In natural light situations, the histogram is my primary exposure determinant. In dynamic, artificially lit environments, I’ll simply give the scene as much exposure as possible without clipping important highlight details. In most instances, I bracket exposures and decide which one(s) to use once I download the images. High ISO testing is a tool to help calculate the exposure quickly and easily.

D. Add light painting. By now, I have a pretty good idea of where, if not how to light the scene. The image is coming together, and I might want to emphasize a particular element of the scene with added light, or simply fill in the shadows to reduce the overall contrast. This last step can be the most challenging, but is also the most creative and rewarding aspect of night photography.

Years of experience guide me in making lighting decisions, but that simply means I might need only a couple of frames to work it out, while someone just getting started may need a few more attempts before they figure out what they are trying to achieve, and then how to achieve it. But the steps are the same: make an exposure, evaluate and adjust until as close to perfect as possible.

Once the quality and amount of added light are where I want them to be, the last step is to consider adjusting the ratio of ambient to added light. I will often reduce the overall exposure length to get a more dramatic effect, to make my lighting stand out. Again, it’s just trial and error until everything falls into place.

Wrapping Up

Hopefully, most of what I’ve written about here is fairly obvious and seems like common sense. Organize your gear, plan ahead, and work in an organized and methodical fashion. That’s the gist of it, with the goal being consistency and repeatability.

As I said before, I’m not trying to get you to work the same way that I do. It’s more important to have a plan that works and stick with it than to do what I or anyone else says you should do. This is what works for me. I encourage you to develop your own field workflow so that you’ll be able to #SeizeTheNight more effectively when you go out to photograph.

Lance Keimig is a partner and workshop leader with National Parks at Night. He has been photographing at night for 30 years, and is the author of Night Photography and Light Painting: Finding Your Way in the Dark (Focal Press, 2015). Learn more about his images and workshops at www.thenightskye.com.

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UPCOMING WORKSHOPS FROM NATIONAL PARKS AT NIGHT