As part of its 2023 in Review series, National Geographic has not only revealed its "Pictures of the Year," the iconic publication has also worked with its photographers to deliver a series of how-to articles designed to help amateur shutterbugs up their game heading into 2024.
Peter Baumgarten is an award-winning nature photographer, educator, and OM SYSTEM Ambassador based on Canada’s Manitoulin Island. The island’s dark sky location provides Baumgarten with stunning nature and minimal light pollution, which allows the photographer to capture bright stars, the Milky Way, and northern lights from right outside his front door.
Jordan Drake -- my YouTube partner -- hands me the Sigma 14mm f/1.4 DG DN Art lens, and the first thing that strikes me is just how bulky it is. The second thing that strikes me is that we need to go shoot some astrophotography with it.
H&Y recently announced a new addition to its lineup of magnetic and hot-swappable filter accessories: the Revoring Swift. The comapny says it is the world's first modular magnetic filter system and was launched on Kickstarter where, at the time of publication, it already achieved nearly ten times the initial funding goal.
Last week saw the last few days to see and photograph Comet Leonard after sunset at the horizon where I am located in Spain, and when my fellow photographer Javier Martinez Moran asked me to join him in an attempt to catch the comet passing behind the iconic Four Towers of Madrid, I couldn’t say no!
Photographer Ken Lee enjoys the mystery and excitement of nighttime photography as he explores abandoned sites when most are asleep. His latest series features an abandoned water park that had plenty of photographic opportunities.
There are various strategies photographers use to properly illuminate landscape at night, but a neat one that has emerged in recent times is the use of drones equipped with powerful lights. Patryk Sadowski is one photographer who has been doing gorgeous work in this niche.
Apple has released a brief shoot-along online educational class where the company shows how to capture -- and edit -- unique and interesting photos using the iPhone's Night Mode.
Nighttime street and urban photography can actually be easy. Street lamps (your ready-made light sources), can effectively provide all the light you need for your photos. The illumination gives you compositional ideas and options for taking great shots.
I often come across people mixing up “blue hour photography” with “night photography”, but to me, those are distinctively different.
After shooting cities all around the globe for the past 15 years, I managed to publish seven coffee table books featuring cities like Paris, Venice, Los Angeles, and New York. I learned the hard way when was the best time to shoot and want to save you the time and effort so you can make the best photos of cityscapes possible.
When filming the award-winning documentary Awavena in the Amazon rainforest, Director of Photography Greg Downing needed a way to capture the extremely dim light given off by various fluorescent plants and insects. So he turned to Canon's specialized ME20F-SH, which can shoot at up to ISO 4,500,000.
The famous canals of Venice, Italy, are usually photographed with the hustle and bustle of tourists and boats. French photographer Thibaud Poirier decided to visit them in the quiet of the night and shoot beautiful photos showing a different side of the city.
Due to the rapid growth in population, an increasing percentage of the human population lives in cities and suburbs where the night sky is completely obscured by the artificial lights. Skylines littered with lit skyscrapers reach sky high. An endless river of traffic flashing high beams. And the cities are ever-expanding. It is conceivable that most people have lived without having seen the true natural night sky.
People ask me all the time how I get my night shots with the stars, so I made a video on the subject. Here are my 7 tips for crushing night photography.
Photographer Carley Nelson was backpacking at the Havasu Falls in the Grand Canyon last weekend when she asked her friends to point their headlamps at the falls while she captured a long-exposure photo. This is what resulted.
Photographer and filmmaker Elia Saikaly has released a new time-lapse short film titled, Everest. It's a dazzling look at the beauty of the world's highest mountain at night.
Photographer Vincent Laforet dazzled the world a few years ago by photographing iconic cities at night through the open door of a helicopter flying at 7,500+ feet. The work has since been published as a museum-quality photo book titled Air. Laforet's next goal: to bring the same concept to life by shooting video.
Intimidated by nighttime photography? Here's an inspiring 11-minute video from photographer Peter McKinnon on how you can take better photos of cities at night.
When you’re out taking nighttime landscape photos, one of the most difficult tasks is composing your photos exactly how you want. The reason? It’s simply too dark to see anything.
German-French graphic designer Matthieu Bühler has been shooting gorgeous nighttime photos of Tokyo, Japan, focusing his attention on the illumination created by all the different neon lights found across the city. His series is titled "Neon Dreams."
The night has fallen. I am alone, on top of a mountain, at an altitude of 3,000 meters (~9,800 feet). Fog is floating along through the valleys below, illuminated by the pale light of the moon. For a moment I feel like I've landed on a distant planet, lost in space. It's a privilege to be here, a refreshment of the soul.
Japanese photographer Kito Fujio has captured a series of photos of his country's playgrounds at night. The Japanese playground structures play straight into the stereotypical robots and creative designs that we might associate with the country, but under artificial lighting at night, they take on a new dynamic.
Here's a gorgeous nighttime timelapse shot from a different perspective: this "FlightLapse" was captured from the cockpit of a Swiss airliner during a flight from Zurich, Switzerland, to Sao Paulo, Brazil. It shows the world, glowing cities, and other airplanes passing below the Milky Way above.
You don't need fancy lighting equipment to capture nighttime portraits. Follow these few simple tips from photographer Jordan Matter and you'll up your night portrait game instantly, no flash required.
Swedish photographer Tomas Jönsson has taken and shared two photos with what he claims is an unreleased Nikon D7** full-frame DSLR. They're low-light photos so utterly unbelievable that, if they are indeed legitimate, they mean Nikon has an incredible ace up its sleeve.
Streetlights are the driving force behind nighttime street scenes and how they make us feel. The way streetlights spread their light, the shadows they cast, and the colors they bring out affect everything else nearby, setting the tone of the scene.
One of the biggest challenges when it comes to night photography is incorporating good foreground elements, but learning a few simple tricks will instantly elevate your game.
A National Park remote camera has captured a picture-perfect shot of a mountain lion at night with the city lights of Los Angeles as the backdrop.
Photographer Justin Olsen of Salt Lake City, Utah, recently visited a mountain biking trail at night with Cody Kelley, the world's 39th ranked rider. While Kelley did runs and jumps, Olsen shot video entirely by moonlight using the Sony a7S II. The 1-minute Red Bull video above is what resulted.
For his new project Lux Noctis, photographer Reuben Wu lit and photographed landscapes at night by mounting powerful LED lights to GPS-enabled drones.
If you live in a remote area with dark skies, you are one of the lucky ones; the lucky ones that get to look up on a clear dark night and see a thick band of glowing light stretch across the sky.
Canon will start shipping its $30,000 ISO 4.46 million camera this month for people who need to shoot in pitch black environments. A similar technology that's making a splash these days is "color night vision."
A Las Vegas-based company called SPI has a color night vision sensor called the X27. The 1.5-minute video above shows what the 10-megapixel sensor can capture in extremely dark places.
A decade ago, photographer Matt Logue started creating unusual photos of Los Angeles by using Photoshop to remove all the cars and people from the scenes. His project is titled Empty L.A.
Over the past 2 years, photographer Alex Scott has been shooting similar photos of LA freeways. Instead of using Photoshop, however, he wanders onto the freeways in the dead of night, hunting for brief and rare moments when there isn't a single car in sight.
This starry double exposure-style photograph was made using a single long exposure. Photographer Ted Schiele was 190 seconds into a long exposure photo of the night sky when he heard a car coming down the road. He then pointed his camera down towards the car and exposed the camera for another 13 seconds as it approached.
…And we’re back! After a much-needed summer hiatus, it’s that time of the year again when my comrades in the SNL Film Unit all reconvene on the 17th floor of 30 Rockefeller Plaza for another season of filmmaking speed-drills.
In astrophotography, a star tracker is a piece of gear that compensates for the Earth’s rotation so you can take sharp long exposure photographs of the night sky.
Unfortunately, not everyone can get their hands on one of these, and so we've dug up this awesome tutorial by astrophotographer Forrest Tanaka on how to capture impressive astrophotography images without a star tracker.
The film 'Afterglow' by Sweetgrass Productions doesn't even officially release until October 19th, and yet it's already being hailed as "one of the most cinematically profound ski movies ever made." The three-minute teaser above gives you an idea of why.
Earlier this year, we told you about the FLIR ONE, an iPhone case with a built-in thermal camera that made 'predator vision' available to all.
But if the FLIR ONE is just a bit too pricy for your blood, there's a new player in the thermal camera game you might want to take a look at. It's called the Seek thermal camera, and while it's not as impressive as the FLIR ONE, neither is its price.
After a single moth that had invaded her home, Rhose Island-based animal photographer Traer Scott was inspired to create a photo series dedicated to this creature and other denizens of the darkness.
Thus was born the photo-series-turned-book, Nocturne: Creatures of the Night. In it, Scott comes face-to-face (or is it face-to-lens?) with some of the world’s most evasive animals who tend to live and hunt most under the cover of night.