The 15th April 2019 was a very sad day. Not just for Catholics, nor for Parisians, historians, theologists or tourists but for all of us. Europe has lost one of its most beautiful buildings. Ally and I love Notre Dame so as a Notre Dame tribute we would like to show you some of our memories, inside and outside this stunning spiritual place.

Paris, our hearts go out to you.

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London at night is an awesome city. Lights, music, noise and a feeling of culture mixed with bohemian lifestyle. There are millions of images of London at night from the main tourist areas to dimly lit backstreets of East London where Jack the Ripper once stalked. So how can you do unique night photography in London? We would like to show you a few techniques we use to shoot London at night.

We are fortunate to live within an hour’s train ride away from the centre of the city and I, Tim, spend a lot of my life around there running Adobe training courses for business. Of course at the end of the day the last thing one wants to do is to go around creating images especially if it’s winter so Ally and I make special photography trips to London just to shoot. If you are visiting London from other areas there are lots of Airbnb places near the centre but even if you are further out, you can still get late night tubes (24 hours Friday and Saturday) or a night bus home when you’re ready.

A few tips before we start

Dress warmly as the river area can get particularly cold out of summer months.

Travel light – You will walk a lot so remember, the weight of your equipment is inversely proportionate to how far you can explore.

Try to walk as much as possible using maps and not the tube. You will discover more this way.

We rarely carry a large tripod at night, preferring to hold a mini tripod on a wall or other solid surface for long exposures.

London is relatively safe but don’t flaunt your equipment in deserted areas.

Movement with long exposures

Steady your camera against a solid object and use long exposures to get moving lights. The image of Parliament Square with the red bus blur was created by putting the camera on a small wall and using long exposures. Ally tripped the shutter just as the bus entered the scene with a 5 second exposure.

London Bus Blur long 5 second exposure

Long exposures of water at night are really effective especially if there are coloured lights in the scene. Ally actually hand-held the fountain one, just balancing it carefully on the edge of the fountain.

For more about long water exposures read our ND Filter article.

Long exposure of water in Trafalgar Square, London

Use reflections

London at night is just a mass of coloured lights and the river Thames (pronounced Tems) is perfect to reflect these lights. For more on why reflections can make awesome images read this article.

The view across the Thames to London city from Charing Cross bridge

I hand-held the image above from halfway across Charing Cross bridge. I was also aware of composition rules and used symmetry on the horizon as well as placing the largest buildings on the third. For more details about composition rules see our article on How to photograph like Arnold Newman

Look for the unusual

A few years ago I was out photographing by myself (Ally and our daughter India were at the ballet at the Royal opera house). I quite like ballet but I thought I’d go shooting instead. It was just after the terrorist attack in Paris at the magazine Charlie Hebdo. I came across this  memorial outside the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square. The person paying respects just happened along as I was taking the image.

Paying respects at Charlie Hebdo memorial

Use a narrow depth of field.

Try isolating subjects and get interesting out-of-focus light details. I used f2 on a very old leica 40mm lens on my Sony A7R to get the interesting bokeh donut highlights when I photographed this scene in a night market in Greenwich, London. The complementary colour scheme red/yellow and blue also helped.

Lights in Greenwich using narrow depth of field with aperture wide open

Finally

Doing night photography in London during summer is an absolute joy and you may find yourself photographing into the small hours, but the lack of sleep is far outweighed by the incredible images you create. London at night during winter is a totally different city however, and the main obstacle to photographing during winter nights is the cold. Enjoy your winter photography by stopping every so often at the numerous late night cafes around central London. Not only will you warm up but you might see interesting scenes that you would otherwise have missed.

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Churches and cathedrals provide some truly extraordinary lighting. The glow from the altar candles, the multi-coloured light reflections onto stone textures from stained-glass windows or even the delicate light rays visible through the darkness and dust make low-light photography in churches and cathedrals an absolute joy. In addition to this, there is often the opportunity for some stunning symmetry in your images. We found the Eiffel Tower in Paris was incredible for creating symmetry.

Unfortunately, the ecstasy of these images comes with photography agony. Let us show you how to overcome the problems and create some truly awesome low-light photographs.

Fantastic symmetry and lighting – here at St Chappelle in Paris

Getting Your Exposure Right

Obviously, the issue in many churches is the contrast of the darker areas with the bright lights which could be candles, stained-glass windows or tiny clear windows that let in a beam of light. If you expose for the church you will find your candles / windows will be totally over-exposed but if you expose for the candles, you’ll have no detail in the shadows. What we tend to do is to expose for the main church shadow areas, and then stop down 2-3 stops to prevent the highlight subjects overexposing. It’s a good idea to do a few test images, bracketing at 1-stop intervals. With bracketing, you can also mix 2 or more images together in post-processing to get the details from both the shadows and highlights. This process is a form of HDR.

When you see your images in the back of the camera, or once they’ve been downloaded, don’t panic if they look a little bit on the dark side. You can always bring back details from the shadows easier than you can rescue burnt out highlights.

Pro-tip:

When lightening (dodging) areas in Camera Raw, remember that you will be increasing the grain in the shadow area. Also, the shadow areas have less saturation than the middle tones. To compensate for this you can reduce the grain and increase the saturation with the same adjustment brush that you are using to lighten the darker areas.

Light rays make stunning images – St Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City, Rome

Using Slow Shutter Speeds without a Tripod

If you can use a tripod in a church, by all means do so. However, a lot of the large cathedrals have a ban on tripods and flashes but are happy with other photography. There are a few ways around this. Using a small bean bag, you can steady your camera on the top of pews or any other flat surface for longer exposures. We often push our camera hard against a wall or a pillar to hold it steady for multiple-second exposures.

There are a few mini-tripods that are very sturdy available on the market and most church-photography-police don’t see these as an issue if they even realise what they are at all.

Look for the Spiritual Element

Churches can be beautiful empty places, but sometimes you want to get more of the spiritual feeling of the place. Look for elements that can enhance this feeling like beams of light streaming through upper windows in the darkness (light of Heaven lighting the dark paths!) Sometimes you’ll find worshippers in contemplation – if you are able to photograph them in a respectful way, retaining their anonymity – these can make for beautiful images.

Whilst being sensitive, worshippers can add the spiritual element to your image – Notre Dame, Paris

What to do About Tourists

Tourists can be an annoying bunch … ourselves excluded of course! One of the methods we use, especially in churches, is to have them moving through the long exposures. This augments the feeling the ethereal or spiritual and can look quite interesting. The other method is to take several images and put them together in post-processing to remove the people. (See our Vatican stairs tutorial).

Fixing Weird Perspectives

Try to bear in mind when you are taking the photograph with a wide-angle lens that your perspectives are going to be quite extreme and if you can keep your camera as parallel to the ground as possible, then the wild perspectives will not be quite as bad. You will of course have lots of foreground in your image but this can be cropped off in post. Of course you can always sort out your perspectives in Camera Raw using the perspective correction tools.

Watch out for your perspectives – these can add to an image, or you can adjust in Adobe Camera Raw – Notre Dame, Paris

So, there you have it, five easy techniques to improve your low-light photography. The next time you have access to a church or cathedral, go in and practice so when the building is truly awesome you will be prepared to create incredible imagery.

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One of the most iconic towers in the world has to be the Eiffel tower in Paris. Rising up from next to the Seine, (Paris’ main river), it can be viewed from most parts of the city. Most photographers who come to Paris will be drawn to its mysterious beauty.

So, armed with cameras, like everyone else, we rushed up it to create interesting travel photographs from the Eiffel Tower and ……. STOP …. NO!

Another BOORING view from the Eiffel Tower

What do you mean NO?!

Let me explain. We did our homework and scoped out the tower on the day before we were due to go, and found that the best times would be sunset as that would give us both daylight, sunset and night photography opportunities. We chose our equipment for ultra-light travel so we wouldn’t get tired walking around. All good so far.

Well, once you get up the tower, (we went to the 2nd floor as it is supposed to have the best views of Paris), and have finished oohing and aahing at the view of the river you soon realise that you’re  looking at a city from a 40-storey building. Yes this is romantic Paris and yes the river is beautiful, but photographs from the Eiffel Tower are still photographs from a 40-storey building. Most sunsets looks better from the ground with something in the foreground for perspective. See our post for tips on sunsets and creating dramatic skies.

So how do you create unique photographs from the Eiffel tower?

Be different

Like with our Paris graveyard post, we look for images that are different to the norm.

Start to look around for unique features that you can put in the foreground. We spotted the telescopes dotted around the viewing platform and used them as foreground details. This helped us with our images’ ‘story’. The telescopes are shiny metal, so are perfect for reflecting the sunset and sky. They are all about the view (which is why we came) and finally, despite being modern, they have a bit of a victorian mystery about them … a sort of Philip Pullman spyglass feel.

A different perspective with the reflected sunset

Photographing the Eiffel Tower itself

Look for interesting details in the Tower that everyone else takes for granted. Use all your skills with shape, symmetry and contrasting colours to create beautiful images. Ally was fascinated by the pulley wheels and created some extraordinary images with the symmetry of the 2 wheels using the yellow and blue colour to complement the image.

Walk down the stairs

The stairs between the 2nd and 1st floor are not as daunting a trek as it might first seem. Had we walked ‘up’ them, then we might not be as forgiving! Unfortunately the sides of the staircase have a thick grill around them so you can’t take photographs through it. The trick is to look in the corners. There are small gaps between the mesh that are just big enough for an average size lens. At certain levels you can look up and get extraordinary views of the Tower’s workings.

Look up inside the tower

On the first level there are interesting views to be had looking up inside the tower from the leg areas. Once again symmetry is your friend.

On the ground

When on the ground, find the centre of the tower and look up. The symmetrical view up the inside of the tower is quite spectacular. Nobody will look at you funny if you lie on your back to photograph this view!

Ally photographing up the tower

Enjoy the experience

When you go up the Tower start off by forgetting the photography side. Enjoy the experience, look at the magnificent views of the Seine and marvel at the incredible structure itself. After that start to think about your photography. Look for the lesser-photographed areas but above all enjoy your time.

Footnote

It wouldn’t be right to write a blog article on photographing the Eiffel tower without mentioning the odd night photography law. In most of Europe there is a ‘freedom of panorama’ law that exists so one can photograph historic copyright protected artwork and buildings without any issues. There are a few exceptions, the Eiffel Tower’s light show being one of them. Now thousands of tourists photograph the tower every night and the SETE website says that for private use you do not need to contact them but beware if you are photographing for commercial reasons. You will need permission from them (and pay copyright fees).

https://www.toureiffel.paris/en/business/use-image-of-eiffel-tower

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Embocraft are the the local South African heroes who are empowering local entrepreneurs with skills training. Making portraits of these amazing people was a bit difficult due to the low and very extreme lighting conditions involved and required low light photography techniques.

What is Embocraft

Situated just up the road from the Hillcrest AIDS Centre Trust / Woza Moya. Embocraft was started in 1986 to alleviate poverty in the surrounding areas. They do this by conducting skills training to help local entrepreneurs develop and launch their own craft businesses. Training offered there is in sewing, basic computer skills and the internet, welding and screen printing. Work is assessed as they go and feedback given to help improve where appropriate. They are the local heroes who are empowering local entrepreneurs.

Embocraft Sewing Class

As well as these, there is a conference room for hire and a shop where Woza Moya / Hillcrest AIDS Centre Trust also have their products for sale.

Making Images

We had the privilege of Goodness showing us around and we were free to make our own images. There was a sewing class and a welding class going on at the time. The lighting conditions in the welding class particularly called for low light photography techniques.

The classes are product based and the entrepreneurs learn how to make clothing, bags and kitchen accessories. As they go along, they receive feedback from their tutors. There was an excitement amongst those where they were able to learn something that would really benefit them and bring in an income.

Thandi inspecting some work – Embocraft Sewing Class

Welding Woes

The main issue we had with photographing was with the welding. It was very dark in that area and then we had the problem of the bright light of the ‘sparks’ in contrast necessitating us to pump up the ISO and using other low light photography techniques. Once finished though, it can give a very striking image. If we exposed for the welder before he started welding, then the image would be totally overexposed when the bright welding sparks kicked in.

One way around this is to set your camera to Auto and then compensate using the exposure compensation buttons. What we did though, was to shoot manually. We took a reading from the scene and then stopped down a few stops to compensate for the light from the welding. We then did a test to see how much we needed to change it. The final resulting images look very dark, but with some Raw adjustments, we were able to pull back a lot of the details whilst still keeping and showing details in the welding sparks. See our tutorial on exposure compensation and how you can do all this in Raw.

Welding class at Embocraft

Welding class at Embocraft – necessitated low light photography techniques

Embocraft is another model example of the way that South Africans have found to help one another in tough times. It is staffed by people who care deeply about what they do and although money is always needed to make these organisations run, it is secondary to the well-being of everyone involved.

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In the centre of Cape Town in South Africa, the Mother City, is an unassuming coffee shop with a tiny, easily missed, sign outside saying Truth. So what is the truth? Is this the worlds best coffee shop? Like the true coffee desperados we are, we couldn’t wait to get in to find out.

When you enter, you enter an amazing ‘steampunk’ world of metal and pipes, airships and air pirates, old instruments and cogs. Everything is authentic. not a piece of plastic in sight. The staff are dressed appropriately and could not be more helpful. (They are also very happy to pose for photographs.)

On to the coffee – this strange coffee restaurant has a reputation of being the ‘best coffee house in the world’ and it certainly lived up to it. As coffee-holics, we can testify it really is superb and the food is also amazing.

Truth Coffee bar

Whilst in there, wander around and take in the details. Even a trip to the toilet is a ‘steampunk bathroom experience’ from the solid metal doors to the authentic taps and bowls.

Truth steampunk design with fittings

The magical mystical tour

Whilst sitting at our table revelling in the awesome coffee and food smells one of the staff came up to us and in a very low voice whispered. “Would you like to visit the bean chamber?”  Now whilst this sounded more like something out of Harry Potter we jumped at the chance. Groove, (that is the coolest name I’ve ever come across), took us around the back to where all the magic happens. Piles of sacks of coffee beans mix with odd items, (old gramophones, weird lights and a vintage bicycle) in the same steampunk theme. A 100-year old coffee roaster and work areas compete for space in the dim light. This is where the experimentation of different blends takes place in an almost mystical way! A lot of these images were crying out to be made into black and white – see our guide on what makes a good black & white photo.

100 year old coffee roaster

Photography

Photographing in Truth was a bit of a challenge as everything is very very dark. Slow shutter speeds and caffeine to steady the hand was the order of the day as we didn’t have tripods with us. The back room tour was a wonderful surprise. I steadied the camera on anything I could, but still did most of the images at 1600 ISO. The above image was 1/60 sec at f4. We both love Black and White photography as we started our photographic career on film, so we converted a number of the images to black and white with a subtle split tone. This technique gives a really moody feel that suits the dark coffee roasting area so very well. Have a look at Tim’s video explaining best practice in converting from colour to black and white in only 30 seconds.

Groove testing the best coffee blends at Truth

So is Truth the best coffee house in the world? Whilst steampunk is not for everyone, we couldn’t get enough of it, so our vote is a definite “YES”.

Truth Coffee is a quirky, award-winning, steampunk themed restaurant for exclusive coffee, that is not to be missed. To see more of Truth and what they do best, visit them here.

Whilst in Cape Town, take in the other attractions. Read our post on the sunset trip up to Table Mountain. We also highly recommend a trip to Robben Island and Nelson Mandela’s cell.

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