Summer Nights!
I love photographing in low light conditions. There’s drama in the sky as night descends. Colors become remarkably saturated; the lights of cars and trucks form metro-like streaks; lightning bugs twinkle their green glow; lightning flashes cast an eerie light across the landscape. Working in the dark is often nothing but a cascading series of frustrations as I make continual adjustments to aperture and shutter speed. But every so often the planets align and a wonderful photo emerges. Here's a few times where things went my way.
Written by Dave Dreimiller
One of my go-to spots for sunset photos is a stretch of Route 82 in Hiram Township that commands a view of the (summer) sunset position. A real bonus is the long downhill view of the highway that creates a beautiful arc of light from the lights of passing cars, red for westbound, and white for eastbound. I've shot hundreds of photos here; no two are alike.
Night view in Hiram Village with the Hiram College Library visible in the distance. At first glance it looks like an early evening shot, but it was taken at 1:30 am in total darkness. The light in the sky is from a distant lightning strike. I love wide views like this during storms because they place emphasis on the shadows which are totally different than what you see during the day. I love the way each type of light casts a unique color hue, sickly green from mercury vapor lamps, and orange from sodium lighting. LEDs tend to look pure white. Wet pavement adds more reflective potential to these shots, and passing cars also a plus. Rain drops on the lens, normally a hassle, create colorful light flares (visible here at bottom and lower left).
Lightning bugs are probably the most difficult thing to capture on camera. They look bright to the human eye but in reality, it's a very low level light emission. They are brightest when they are very near the lens, and nothing more than pinpoints when distant. I can crank up the camera's ISO to better capture them, but it's the low ISO settings that allow the wonderful noise-free color saturation in the sky that we see here. For me it's totally hit or miss, and mostly miss. This is one of my favorites.
Another view from my hilltop perch in the township. This was shot as the 'magic' time (the hour that follows sunset in the summer months) was just about over but a firework just happened to burst over the distant horizon while the lens was open (shots like this average about 30 seconds with the camera set on a tripod to prevent blur). After the 'magic' time ends, color in the sky is lost and it's either just blue or black. Working outside at night I never know what might happen and that adds to the excitement. Fireworks, gunfire, disembodied voices, meteors, wild animals, rain and storms...something weird always happens.
Moments before sundown, the sun often takes on an eerie red glow that paints the surroundings ending sky. On this evening the clouds formed a wonderful swirling effect. The sun seems motionless in the sky all day; you know it's moving (actually it's earth that's moving) but you really can't see it moving. But the motion is readily detected as the sun closes in on the horizon. I had just a few seconds to get this shot as the sun dipped beneath the treeline.
Yet another look west along Route 82 in the township, westbound cars leaving red trails and east-bounders creating white trails as their headlights face the camera. In this image, the white streak comes to an abrupt halt marking the moment the lens closed. The uppermost red trail that appears near the center of the image is the result of the driver hitting their brakes illuminating their third (eye level) brake light. This happens frequently as drivers sometimes catch a glimpse of me and my gear and think I am clocking speeders.
More lightning bu action on a summer evening. Mostly just stars in the background but suddenly the mother of all fireflies appeared right in front of me causing this wonderful trail. Grass in the foreground was illuminated by me waving a small LED flashlight. In retrospect that might be what attracted the firefly.
During setup for the storm photo (above) a giant truck rumbled right through my shot causing this multitude of light trails. The road was illuminated by the trucks high intensity headlights. I so wish there had been a flash of lightning during this exposure. At this hour on a weeknight, there was virtually no traffic of any sort. This was the only time during my session that a truck passed.