5 Tips that will Improve Your Night Street Photography Game

Introduction

Are you just getting started with street photography or do you simply want to get the most out of your night time street photography?

Here are five simple tips for you to get cracking with right away.

Let's get into it.

Don't be afraid of noise

A concern for many photographers is having noise in their images. For landscape photography, this makes a lot of sense. You want that beautiful vista, with the sunset skies, the mountains, and the lakes to look clean, colourful and detailed. Noise would ultimately ruin the splendour of the image. Landscape definitely photography needs to remain clean.

However, for Street Photography noise can add to the atmosphere of an image, especially if the streets are grimy and dirty.

Street photographer's need to use a high ISO much of the time, as fast Shutter Speeds need to be balanced out by another exposure variable - usually ISO. They also need to use a high ISO value when faced with changing light and enclosed street scenarios.

This is especially true at night as the darkness of the evening needs a lot of exposure to take well-exposed images.

When choosing your ISO for night street photography, you generally want to use an ISO of 800 - 6400. The darker the scene that you are shooting the higher the ISO will need to be.

When using high ISO you will need to balance the exposure out with your aperture. You can only go so far slowing down the shutter speed before your subjects are blurred, therefore, having a wide aperture is a must at night. Anything from f/5.6  - f/ 1.2 approximately, is a great aperture for night street photography.

Alternatively, you can use Auto ISO which allows you to set a specific range that you want your ISO to fall within, i.e ISO 800 - 6400. If you are using Aperture Priority, you can also set the minimum shutter speed. The shutter speed that you should set should depend on the minimum shutter speed that you know you can use at night without having blurred subjects in your shots and also the minimum shutter speed that you know you can handhold the camera at, without camera shake causing the image to be blurred.

For instance, I would choose a minimum shutter speed of 1/80 sec at night because I know that the image stabilisation in my camera allows me to shoot sharp shots at approximately that shutter speed.

Therefore, I can take photos and let the camera choose the ISO based on the Auto ISO range that I have set. I can then shoot safe in the knowledge that once I enter a situation that would cause the shutter speed to drop below the minimum of 1/80 sec, instead of the shutter speed dropping further, the ISO increases from the base level of 800.

If you're using Auto ISO with Aperture Priority, one caveat you have to be aware of is that if the camera has chosen the minimum shutter speed of 1/80 sec and the maximum ISO of 6400, and there is still not enough exposure, the camera will sacrifice your minimum shutter speed, going below 1/80 sec.

If you are using Manual mode with Auto ISO you have control over the aperture and the shutter speed. This is beneficial because you have the advantage of changing the shutter speed to suit the situation. If somebody is walking under a street lamp you can shoot them at 1/125 sec at ISO 6400. If they suddenly stop and stand up against the wall next to the street lamp and light a cigarette, you can slow down the shutter speed thus letting the camera take advantage of using a lower ISO.

Ultimately, shooting at a high ISO is a necessity when shooting night street photography. It's more important that you capture your subjects in that decisive moment than worrying about a bit of noise in your image.

Want to know how well exposed the scene is? Check the histogram and the exposure meter. If the information on the histogram veers over to the left, this means that you are underexposed. On the exposure meter, if the indicator is also on the left hitting the minus figures, this also means that you are underexposed. However, a little underexposure, such as approximately a stop, is not necessarily a bad thing, you can simply bring back the shadows in post-processing. Just make sure that you are not so underexposed that the majority of your image is in dark shadows.

This image was taken at ISO 6400 and has alot of noise in the Shadows that I reduced in Lightroom.

Go fishing

As well as rushing around like a lunatic in the dark looking for subjects to shoot you can also use a technique that has been made famous by such photographers as Henri Cartier Bresson. The fishing technique involves standing in a certain area and waiting for the right subject to enter it.

For instance, in this image, I stood on the opposite side of the street waiting for somebody to enter the frame. I wanted the subject to walk under the lamplight on one side of the frame. This might sound easy but you have to wait for the right subject. You don't particularly want a couple of people or a family. However, you do want somebody who is dressed in bright clothing or an interestingly dressed character.

The main skill that you must develop when using this technique is patience. There's waiting, and there's waiting and there's even more waiting. You have to be able to wait for as long as need be for that right subject.

Go out and find interesting locations. Under lamplight, outside pubs and bars, under bridges, the list of possible locations goes on and on.

Once you have got that perfect shot and uploaded the photo to your computer, you will most certainly see that it has all has been worthwhile.

This is a very similar technique to wildlife photographers waiting for the animal to make their moves.

I waited for the right subject to walk into frame

Use Streetlights to your Advantage

Street lights are the night street photographer's best friend. I have said this many times before. Without night street lights, there is no night street photography. These lights illuminate everything.

Here the process is simple:

For added atmosphere, make sure that the lights are featured in your images. These lights can either be street lights and/or shop lights. In particular, it is street lamps that can have the most atmospheric impact if you include them as part of your compositions.

Just for reference, I use a Tiffin Pro black mist filter which adds a beautiful halation around the light.

One difficulty you might face - it is very easy to clip the highlights of any man-made lights, therefore you must either use Exposure Compensation (if you are using Aperture Priority) or make a change to your aperture or ISO (if you're using Manual Mode), so that you can slightly underexpose the image, getting those highlights exposed properly. Then you can increase the shadows in post-processing if need be.

Shop lights and also neon night street photography can also be very atmospheric as many of these lights are coloured and add another dimension to your images when the right subjects walk into the frame. Pay attention to how these lights bring out the texture in surfaces that you would normally take for granted.

Illumination, Shadows, Textures, Details, Contrast, Vibes, Highlights - these are the photographable elements that lights have that can help add depth to your images.

The lights illuminate and bring out the texture on the streets

Use compositional elements in your photos for more impact

if you notice from numerous photos of mine, I make good use of leading lines in my images, which works to add depth and pull the viewer into the image. This is simple to achieve, when you are positioned parallel to the road, facing up or down the road.

Check out how the street and the shops lead to the subjects

As I said earlier, texture is an important element and can easily be brought to the fore with the street lamps illuminating walls, streets and shop fronts.

Framing is another compositional technique that you can use, especially when you want to position your subjects off centre, or even in the centre, or even look for a composition that is symmetrical.

Coloured lights and other colours can also create a powerful punch with your imagery.

Coloured Lighting is the best!

Edit carefully

Night photography is what it says on the tin - it is supposed to be dark. It looks best when minimal edits are applied. A simple play with the Shadows and the Highlights is all that is needed. Plus the Tone Curve and maybe the Vibrance slider.

In my opinion, the worst thing that you can do is create an HDR image, which would mean cranking up the shadows and thrusting down the highlights. When I was first starting out with landscape photography, this was my editing preference of choice until I started realizing that natural looks best.

And this always applies to street photography.

Of course, if you want to apply your own stamp on your images then use the Color Grading tool in Lightroom or apply a preset that isn't too bold. But there really is no need to go crazy.

However, you don't have to listen to my advice at all. If you enjoy HDR, or you have found a unique way of applying your edits to your street photography that is going to change the game, then by all means go crazy!

Conclusion

I hope these five nighttime street photography tips are helpful to you, no matter what level of street photographer you currently are at.

Go forth and create.