For Krissy

A few days ago Krissy asked a photography question:

"How do you take great night pictures? I will be doing some photography for a wedding in two weeks and the bride would like an outdoor picture of herself with Cincinnati in the back ground, at night."

My first suggestion was to have them stand really still and take a long exposure (like maybe 5 seconds). People used to have to hold still for much longer times in the early days of photography, but to keep the subject still they would use a clamp on their head - I recommend you don't try that with the bride. Anyway, I think the long exposure would look the most natural, maybe with a little bit of a bounced flash (probably using either the slow-sync or the rear-sync modes) to make her stand out.

That's a tricky shot though, and may be tough to pull off when you're under the gun. If the person moves at all or even blinks, the shot will be blurry. As a backup method, I recommended shooting two pictures and Photoshopping them together. After I suggested this, I wondered how it would work in real life, so I gave it a try. Here's a recap of what I did in my test. While not a full-blown tutorial, it should give you an idea of how to recreate the effect.

Below is a picture I took of myself (using the Nikon ML-L3 remote) a few nights ago while I was out getting groceries. Clicking on any of the photos to see it full-size. (apparently when I'm doing photography tests my mouth hangs open)

Flash Used: Yes - Nikon SB-400 (Auto, return light not detected)
Focal Length: 18.0mm (35mm equivalent: 27mm)
Exposure Time: 0.0050 s (1/200)
Aperture: f/3.5
ISO equiv: 900
White Balance: Auto
Exposure: shutter priority (semi-auto)

Yeah, it's pretty awful lighting, but I didn't want to spend too much time on this so it will have to do. The NKU campus is behind me, but because I used a flash to light myself up the background falls off almost completely into the blacks.

I then took a long-exposure (5 sec) background plate, in which you can actually see the campus in the background and even some texture in the sky.

Flash Used: No
Focal Length: 18.0mm (35mm equivalent: 27mm)
Exposure Time: 5.000 s
Aperture: f/7.1
ISO equiv: 200
White Balance: Auto
Exposure: shutter priority (semi-auto)

I dropped both layers in Photoshop (I wasn't using a tripod, so I had to align them a little) . I added a layer mask (Layer > Layer Mask > Reveal All) to the layer of me, and used the paintbrush to paint the mask you see below:

The initial result is pretty bad because of the difference in lighting:

I did a little color correction to my layer to match the look of the background, although if I had spent a little more time lighting myself better this may not have been necessary. While I'm at it let's close my mouth a little:

And finally I'll blend in a little of my layer back into the foreground to make the difference in lighting a little more gradual and make the picture a little more believable:


If I had to do this again and wanted to make it look nice, here's what I'd do different:

• Use a tripod.
  
• Take several shots with the person in the frame at several speeds, maybe 5 sec, 3 sec, 1 sec, 1/10 sec & 1/60 sec. In each of these make sure the aperture is open all the way.
• On the shorter exposures I'd use a flash bounced off a white card, and on the longer exposures I'd either rear-sync bounce flash or use some constant lighting source. That would give me several options, and I'd pick the longest exposure that wasn't blurry (from the person moving).

Let me know if you try this, or if you have any alternative methods. I'd love to see your results.