Night Photography Albert Chu

All photos taken on iPhone 15 Plus camera/lightroom camera

In this photo, I took a long exposure of my backyard with the lights on. I used the low angle to add leading lines from the garden bed to the string of lights. These lights can act as focal points while also increasing the visibility of the image.

In this image, I took photos of my driveway outside my house. I used 3 different images and applied a raster mask to bracket the three images together. I used a gradient from the top right with the darkest, as I liked the darker night sky and lights, but liked the lighter colors of the trees and road.

Here I tried to take a picture of my house with the new Christmas lights. Using a high ISO makes the image appear gritty, but also allows the viewer to better focus on the bright lights on the tree.

Reflection

Taking photos during the night was definitely a challenge because of the inherent lack of light during these hours. It made taking shots at places where I would have liked near impossible without any good lighting and made some other shots look strange or wrong. I enjoyed making the Bracketing photo of my street because it allowed me to change the view of the photo to how I liked each section. Also, because I had no outside light sources available, I tried to use the built-in camera flash during lighter hours but still proved ineffective. The camera flash on an iPhone is unfortunately on the same side as the camera, forcing the light to disproportionately brighten one side compared to the other. I think with an external light, I could have taken the same photo during the night and created a much better image than the one I posted. I believe the overall, best photos taken were those of long exposure, as they massively increased the visibility of my photos and kept the quality I was looking for. I would like to take images in the wilderness with a high iso and low lighting to see if I could get any good results in the future, as these images tend to feel nostalgic to me. Also, I do not own a tripod, but I would also like to get one in the future to get images with a high aperture and bright lights during the night.