The Night Landscape

Night blankets the earth half the time, so it makes sense that landscape photographers should consider expanding their horizons to include the dark side. This particularly makes sense when you consider the drama inherent in lights at night—whether those lights come from stars or city streets. When the world is otherwise in darkness, vivid colors can seem all the more spectacular.

Generally, when I am photographing landscapes at night, I look for vistas where there is interest in both foreground and background. Background interest can come from star circles, but to maximize them (at least in the northern hemisphere) you do need to point your camera north.

Landscape exposures away from cities at night are long affairs—very long. In normal photography, you think of a shutter duration of more than 30 seconds as long. In night landscape photography, it is not uncommon to have total exposure time be in the hours.