The making of a night photograph

During the transition period from day to night, the balance between the light of the illuminated buildings and the light of the sky is constantly changing. The artificial lights are getting to appear more clearly while the sky is getting darker. It is difficult to find the best moment for a balanced photograph. The artificial lights should stand out in semidarkness but the sky should still be blue. To find the optimal exposure can also be difficult. Therefore, I usually make a sequence of shots at different times and with different exposure bias settings.

There was a special problem when making this photo. When I was ready to do a sequence of shots, all lights were switched on except the ones on the surface of the large building. So I had to be prepared to combine two images, i.e. take the lights from a later photo and place them on a photo taken earlier (basic image). This can only be done if the two images are congruent with respect to each other. Therefore, I switched off Auto Focus after having taken the first shot. Otherwise, the camera would initiate the auto focus process prior to each shot which would lead to varying focus settings. The images of the sequence would thus have nonidentical reproduction scales, i.e. the images would not be congruent. If the image with the lights is not congruent with respect to the basic image, the lights would be misplaced.

Exposure was critical. Due to the ultra wide-angle lens' large 104° horizontal angle of view, the color of the sky spans from light blue on the left-hand side of the scene (where the sun went down) to deep dark blue on the right-hand side. Images 1 to 3 are overexposed with respect to the blue component of the sky on the left-hand side, resulting in banding, i.e. a non-smooth color gradient. Image 4 is correctly exposed, while the color of the sky is not yet too dark on the right-hand side. On images 5 to 7, the sky is too dark.

From the sequence of shots, I chose image 4 as the basic image. The lights of the building were cut out of image 7 (with Gimp's Select by Color Tool) and pasted onto the basic image. Illuminated hotel windows from images 3, 5 and 7 were added. The elevator door with the brightly lit cabin behind was replaced with the elevator door from image 7. To intensify the reflexions on the water surface, image 7, set to 15% opacity, was added.

The making of a night photograph

Protocol of a shooting session (Night photographs, series 2, image 15)