Street photography at night: how to photograph the city

At the end of October, the clocks go back an hour. You gain an hour’s sleep and lose your afternoon. By six, it’s dark outside. If you fancy heading out with your camera after work, you suddenly find yourself walking through a different city.

I don’t think that’s bad news, actually. In the evening, the light comes from shop windows, streetlights and windows in buildings. People walk faster, collars turned up. And all that clutter in your background during the day simply disappears into the black.

Street photography at night does call for different choices. Your camera has to work harder, focusing gets trickier and you need to make your peace with a bit of noise. You’ll find the daytime basics in the best settings for street photography. Here, I’m looking at what changes once the sun has gone.

The blue hour

The best moment often comes just after sunset. The sky isn’t black yet but deep blue, while the streetlights and shop window lights are already on. That’s the blue hour. Though it rarely lasts an hour. More like twenty minutes to half an hour, depending on the season and the weather.

A lot comes together in that short window. There’s still enough light in the sky to make out rooflines and silhouettes, while the street is full of warm artificial light. Blue above, orange below. If you shoot in colour, those two colours do a lot of the work for you. I’ve written about that choice in street photography in black and white or colour.

Your best bet is to be there before it starts. Find your spot while it’s still light. Then you won’t spend the blue hour looking for one, because twenty minutes go quickly.

Now the city provides the light

During the day, you look for sunlight, as I described in photographing light and shadow on the street. In the evening, the principle is the same. Only the light source changes. You find a patch of light and wait for someone to step into it.

Shop windows are ideal. A lit shop window is basically a big softbox at eye level. Anyone who stops in front of it gets soft light on their face, while the rest of the street stays dark. You won’t find a better studio for free.

Streetlights cast harder pools of light on the pavement. You can work with those just as you would with a patch of sunlight: an empty circle, a little patience and someone walking through it.

Then there are the screens. Advertising displays at bus stops, scrolling LED signs, the phone someone holds right in front of their face. I always find that last one a strange sort of light, cold and bluish, coming from below. It does say something very specific about how we walk through cities these days.

High ISO isn’t a disaster

I think this is the biggest hurdle. You set your ISO to 400, see that the photo is too dark or blurred and start thinking about going home.

You can comfortably push that ISO higher. Most modern cameras still produce perfectly good photos at 3200, and often at 6400 too. Yes, you get noise. But I’d rather have a sharp photo with grain than a blurred one without it.

Noise doesn’t automatically mean ugly, either. Look at street photos from the days of fast film: grain was simply part of it. That works even better in black and white. A photo of a wet street at ten in the evening is allowed to look as though it was taken at ten in the evening.

Do shoot in RAW, so you have some room to work with afterwards. And go easy on the noise reduction in your editing software. I use Capture One, and the same applies there: too much cleaning up makes faces look plastic. Better to leave a little grain.

Shutter speed and aperture

My Street photography checklist recommends at least 1/250 of a second. In the evening, you often can’t manage that without pushing your ISO ridiculously high. Something has to give.

For someone walking at a leisurely pace, you can usually get away with 1/125 of a second. If someone is standing still by a shop window or at a bus stop, 1/60 can work too. Any slower and it gets difficult to hold the camera steady, unless you can lean against a wall or a post.

You’ll also be opening up the aperture. Where you might use around f/8 during the day, in the evening you’re more likely to end up at f/2.8 or f/2, if your lens allows it. That lets in more light, but gives you less depth of field. I’ll come back to that shortly, because you’ll notice it when focusing.

Auto ISO with a minimum shutter speed is a handy combination in the evening. You choose the slowest shutter speed you’re comfortable with and an aperture. The camera handles the ISO, up to a limit you set. That saves you doing sums as you walk.

A fast lens really does make a difference in the dark. For focal lengths that work well on the street, see which camera and lens to choose for street photography.

Focusing in the dark

During the day, zone focusing is the quickest way for me to work. You focus manually at a fixed distance, use a small aperture and everything within a certain zone is sharp enough. You no longer have to think about autofocus.

That works less well in the evening. At f/2 or f/2.8, the zone of acceptable sharpness gets much narrower. What gave you a few metres of leeway during the day is now just a narrow strip. If your subject is just in front of it or just behind it, they’re out of focus. Simple as that.

There are two ways around this. The first is manual focusing, but very precisely on one spot. Choose a patch of light by a shop window, focus exactly there and wait for someone to stand on that bit of pavement. You’re working more like an angler than a hunter.

The second is simply to go back to autofocus. Modern cameras focus better in low light than you might think, especially if there’s some contrast. A lit face against a dark background, for example. It just takes a little longer. Allow for a slight delay and press the shutter a little early rather than too late.

Choosing motion blur

Sometimes it helps to turn things around. If you can’t get things sharp, you can use the movement instead.

Set your shutter speed to 1/15 or 1/8 of a second and let people walk past. You’ll get smears of light and ghostly figures against a stationary background. Or pan with a cyclist, keeping them reasonably sharp while the lights behind become streaks.

This often goes wrong. Really often. But when it works, a photo like that can show how busy and fast a city feels at night better than a pin-sharp photo can.

The difference between a failed photo and a deliberate choice usually lies in the rest of the frame. If something in the photo stays still and sharp, such as a building or a lamppost, the movement looks intentional. If everything is blurry, it looks like an accident. For more on building that kind of frame, see composition in street photography.

Wet streets and reflections

A wet evening is often better than a dry one. After a shower, every street becomes a mirror. Streetlights, headlights and shop windows reflect off the tarmac. A dull street suddenly has twice as much light.

I photograph in the rain too. I wrote a separate article about that: photographing in the rain. In the evening, the effect is even stronger because there are so many more light sources reflected in those puddles.

Find a puddle and get down low. You can photograph the reflection instead of the person, or include both in one frame. Even when the rain stops, there’s still plenty to see. The half-hour after a shower, when the streets are still gleaming and the umbrellas have just closed, is often the best part of the evening.

Windows and shiny car roofs work as mirrors too. Your background becomes a foreground. It takes a bit of figuring out, but it gives you photos you need to look at for a moment before you understand what you’re seeing.

Festive lights as December approaches

The closer you get to December, the more lights appear around the city. Strings of lights above shopping streets, illuminated trees, shop windows suddenly making an extra effort. The photo accompanying this article shows what that does: an ordinary shopping street becomes a sea of tiny lights behind someone.

With a wide aperture, those points of light turn into soft circles. That can look lovely, but it can quickly become kitsch. I think it works best when the lights say something about the place or the moment, rather than just being decoration.

Keep an eye on your exposure, though. All those bright points can confuse your light meter. Expose for the face or your subject, not the lights. Whatever is in the light needs to be properly exposed. The rest can be dark.

If you join the London masterclass in November, you’ll find the city already in the Christmas spirit. We photograph during the day, from 10am to 3pm. The evening is yours, and in London in November, it starts nice and early.

Lit windows and the boundaries of privacy

Something happens in the evening that doesn’t happen during the day: houses become see-through. Behind lit windows, you see people cooking, watching television or sitting at the table. I think it’s one of the most photogenic things about a city after dark. It’s also where street photography starts to feel uncomfortable.

Taking photographs from a public road is generally allowed in the Netherlands, but taking a photo is different from publishing it. Someone in their own living room may well have a legitimate interest in protecting their privacy. That’s the sort of interest covered by Dutch portrait rights. For how that works, and how things differ in Belgium, read can you photograph people on the street?. It isn’t legal advice, but it’s a good starting point.

Alongside the law, there are your own ethics. I think those matter at least as much here. A building full of lit windows with tiny figures inside is different from a close-up of someone in their own kitchen. Where you draw the line is something you decide for yourself. I’ve written about my own view in ethics in street photography.

Staying safe while you’re out

The dark brings some ordinary, practical concerns too.

Keep an eye on your belongings. A camera around your neck stands out more than you might think on a dark street. A wrist strap and a small bag you can quickly slip it into help. Bring a spare battery, because it runs down faster in the cold than you’re used to.

Going out together is safer, and it’s simply more sociable. Waiting by a shop window feels less awkward when there are two of you. If you find that waiting difficult anyway, you might find building the confidence to photograph on the street useful. With the 1-on-1 workshop, you choose the city yourself and can bring a friend along for free.

And wrap up warm. Sounds like something your mum would say, but standing still beside a patch of light in November is cold work. Cold fingers and tiny dials aren’t a good combination.

Just get started

The dark is no reason to wait until spring. It’s a different season, with different photos. Try a short walk just after sunset in a city you know well. For me, that’s Nijmegen, where I know the city centre like the back of my hand. It’s there that I really notice what the light does to places I walk past during the day without a second glance.

The lessons from daytime still apply in the evening. Wait, watch your background, return to the same spot. I’ve put fifteen together in my street photography tips.

Would you rather learn to look together? Browse the street photography workshops, or join me for two days of REFRESH in Paris or London.