Photographing Snow at Night
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Snow melting on a branch is the subject of the above photograph. It was taken with the camera set to macro. Other settings included a forced flash and automatic ISO.
The difficulty with night time macro-photography is getting the subject in focus in the dark, prior to the flash going off. The LDC viewer on most digital cameras is not built to work in the dark, so taking pictures in focus is mostly a matter of taking a number of pictures at different lengths and angles to see which ones work.
The strength of the flash also needs to be taken into account. Too strong a flash brightens up the background. Decreasing the exposure level might also help maintain a dark background during night time flash photography.
Many image processing software programs provide back end tools for managing the background color of night photography. The brightness level on the above picture, for example, was reduced by 20% during editing to enhance the black background.
The technique also works for taking night time pictures of flowers and other macro subjects, not normally seen with a black background.
© 2008 Patricia A. Michaels