This evening in my photography class, we went up to the penthouse of one of the buildings on campus that gave us an excellent view of downtown Calgary and looking west toward the Rockies.
Now for some zooming fun:
From our perch, we also had a good view of the C-train, Calgary’s light rail train.

Painting with Light
And of course, the photographer!
Some Night Photography Tips:
- Use a Tripod. Even amazing people cannot hold a camera perfectly still for more than a second.
- Put your camera on manual: use a low ISO (100 or 200), a small aperture (f/11, f/16, etc.) and a long shutter speed. Use the light meter to expose properly or under expose slightly to increase saturation of colours.
- Use your timer or a remote as pressing the shutter can create small vibrations, which equals blurry photos.
- Use a small light to “paint” light like I did with the C-Train. Once the camera starts taking the picture, point the light towards the camera and paint to your heart’s content.
- You can zoom, tilt, pan, rotate or just move your camera to create fun light trails.
- Experiment and have fun!
What is your favourite thing about night photography?
Thanks for posting some pics that were so close to my home! 🙂 You did a great job!!
Those are awesome! I just bought my first DSLR and yet to play with night shots of course I don’t live with that many lights in my backyard either! HA!
Thank you! 🙂
If you use a tripod or something you can balance your camera on fairly steadily, you can take some really nice pictures of the moon, sunsets/sunrises and/or dusk shots. They are a bit more difficult to play around with zooming and stuff though.
I love all of these pictures! I’ve been wanting to learn how to take some awesome night pictures, but I’m not quite sure how much my little point and shoot can do.
You make Calgary look good!
Wow Bean! These pictures are amazingly beautiful!
Thank’s for sharing those tips 😉 I’ll start putting them on practice!
Have a nice night!
Coool! I need to learn how to use my camera.
These are awesome-I love the painting with light! Thanks for stopping by my blog!
These are wonderful pictures! Great job! I wish I had a DSLR camera. I have a terrible time taking pictures at night, I can’t adjust my camera’s settings very well.
Thanks for stopping by my blog! Have a great weekend!
Great night time captures. Thanks for putting your shooting details. I will visit again.
K
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Nice effect you’ve got in the third one. Love that light lines (are like perspective lines of fugue in architecture drawings)