The Art of Photography

Wednesday 10 August 2011

Outdoors at Night

An exercise in looking at various lights at night time. Artificial lights come in so many colours and generally you will get several different lights in the one place, making it very difficult to get the colours right. Although the various colours can be the main objective of the photo as in light trails.
  • a floodlit building
Taken as the sky was starting to get black. Auto white balance. As the night gets darker you lose more and more detail in the area not lit by the floodlights.  I prefer the light when the sky has gone a rich blue after sunset and just before it is totally black.

  • a brightly lit store front
With street lights and store lights and traffic lights the best results for this image where achieved by using auto white balance. Situations with so many different colours of light are best shot in RAW and adjusted in post processing.  Although the camera's awb does a reasonable job.



  • a large interior with many people
Taken in the evening with no natural light. Auto white balance and fluorescent white balance gave the best results for the concourse of this railway station.
white balance = auto
white balance = daylight

white balance = tungsten


white balance - fluorescent
  • A raised view looking along a busy road

Taken in the evening from a pedestrian over bridge. All with a shutter speed of 8secs aperture F11. I have changed the white balance to see the effects. From the top going down Auto WB, daylight and fluorescent.  AWB gives the most realistic colour but not are perfect for all the colour.  Given the range of various colours my approach would be to shoot awb and adjust in post processing as different parts of the image require different adjustments.

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