The city at night is a fantastic place for photography. We explain how the twilight hours are perfect for capturing atmospheric pictures.
For great cityscapes you can’t beat shooting at twilight: after the sun has set, but before the darkness falls, there’s still enough natural light to bring out detail, while the city lights will be coming on to create extra colour and interest. Twilight doesn’t last long though, so you’ll need to be in position and set up before the sun sets.
For our shoot we headed into the heart of London to photograph St Paul’s Cathedral and the Millennium Bridge from the Thames Embankment; for a successful twilight cityscape you need to include iconic or interesting buildings or bridges that are illuminated at night.
You’ll need a tripod, and optionally an ND filter to stop down the light so you can shoot long exposures. Aside from enabling you to blur water and skies, long exposures have another use: if cars or people are passing through your scene and the exposure is long enough, they won’t appear in the image – you’ll need a shutter speed of between 15 to 30 seconds to achieve this.
I for one, can't help if I am in a new city and want to capture what I see. And that means, I'm usually out walking around towards twilight. Knowing how to take a mesmerizing, low-light photograph can have it's ups and downs. But remember, rule number one...bring a tripod or set your timer and have your camera sitting still on a flat surface.