An Unusual Approach to Photographing Popular Landscapes
My wife and I were visiting a very popular place over the easter holidays on the south coast of England. This is Durdle Door, a very popular place to photograph for landscape photographers and rightly so, it is a beautiful coastline with many opportunities for some great compositions and it got me thinking, how would you go about getting these beautiful landscapes void of people, without any kind of photoshop work.
Well there is a way, but it does mean having a few sleepless nights and timing it with the moon cycles …. but if you happen to be at a really busy location and the day time and even sunset is a no go for some classic landscape photography, then try this.
Durdle Door is such a fantastic place for landscape photography
Choose the Right Time of the Day
You could get up early for a sunrise, but at such a popular place like Durdle Door in Dorset, over a public holiday, there are lots of other landscape photographers out in the morning.
Unless you know exactly where to go, you might not be able to get to the spot you want to as there might already be someone there; this is what I found with this location when doing a sunrise.
Over the easter weekend, this year (2022), the UK also had fantastic weather and so there were a lot of holiday makers roaming around …. clear blue skies over the holidays do always make for very busy beaches.
This is the busiest I have ever seen it in the day …
Also, over holiday weekends, a lot of people will be on vacation, so for a sunrise, there are normally a lot of other landscape photographers at these popular locations …
So instead of this, I opted for a night shoot, trying to make it look like the middle of the day … and there is a way you can easily do this.
Moonlight is just reflected Sunlight
When you get a full moon, it can actually be really bright, especially once your eyes get used to the amount of light.
This light can be easily captured by your camera. You do have to get a longer than normal shutter speed to capture it for a decent exposure.
All you need is a relatively clear sky, or at least patches of clear sky so the moonlight breaks through from time to time. When the moon does go behind the clouds, you’ll be surprised at how dark it gets … as soon as a little patch of cloud went over the sun when I was out, it got so dark, my camera was struggling to focus, whereas when the moonlight was at its brightest, the camera’s autofocusing system was doing just fine.
For this type of night photography, the closer to the full moon you are the better. Also I think that longer exposures would work better, so when I do go out next time, I will be taking my shutter release cable to get some really long exposures of 1-5 minutes … and with a bit of cloud cover, I think you could get some really unique looking light on the landscapes you photograph.
Luckily when I was visiting, it was a full moon, however this did sit right on the saturday of the Easter weekend so as soon as the sun started to rise, it got really busy!
17mm | 30 seconds | f2.8 | ISO100 The RAW files were dark, but with a bit of editing the detail can be brought out …
WIth a bit of editing, you can bring out all of the details and make it look a little like the day time
My Setup
I opted for the Sony A7C for this shoot as I was filming with the A7iv. The A7C is a great little camera, it is full frame and when paired with a fast lens, like the Tamron 17-28mm f2.8, you don’t need really long exposure times to get a good exposure.
I was able to get some good photographs with a 15-30 second exposure time.
💡 Tip:
If you don’t have an f2.8 lens, you can still do moonlight photography, you might just need a shutter release cable to take longer exposures than the longest time set in most cameras which is either 30 or 60 seconds.
With these long exposures, you do need to shoot from a tripod.
My Complete setup:
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I just could have done with a few clouds in the sky for this one …
The Things I Learned
In going out in the middle of the night to try to get nighttime photographs looking like the daytime, I did learn quite a lot.
You need to know where all the settings are on your camera (I forgot my headtorch…doh!)
Even though your eyes adjust to the moonlight, it is still relatively dark. This means that you can’t quite see all of the buttons on your camera. I have used the A7C so much for filming my youtube videos that instinctively know where all the settings I need are.
This is a good reason why I keep saying you just need to keep going out with your camera. This will build up your muscle memory as to where all of the buttons are and where all of the settings you use on a regular basis are.
Location Scouting is Essential with Night Photography
When you go to a new location, there could be a lot of hazzards you don’t know about. If I was to have just gone to this location at night, I might not have known about the big cliffs. Therefore it was great that I had already gone to this location in the daytime to work out where I might take the photos I had in mind and also to work out where all of the potential hazards are.
So If you are planning on doing this type of night photography, it is essential to scout the location in the day. In this video, I do exactly that and show you why this is so important.
Taking Photographs at Night is so Rewarding
The main thing I found with this type of photography is that it is so rewarding and you can get some very unique looking photographs. I was really happy with what I got and I think I will be doing this a lot more in the future.
The Classic angle from the clifftop of Durdle Door 30 second exposure | f2.8 | ISO640
The Downsides to Night Photography
It may sound great where you get the chance to get some photographs of very popular scenes to yourself, but there are some downsides.
The main thing with this is the loss of sleep. The evening after this I was so tired that I had to go to bed really early … and this didn’t go down well with my wife as we were meant to be meeting up with friends that evening. So it will take its toll if you do spend the whole night out … and if the conditions are good, this will inevitably happen.
The skies will look a bit strange if you look at them closely, especially when you use longer shutter speeds over a minute or so. this will start to stretch out the stars in the sky. Now you could go for some star streaks, but this does take a very long time … like a few hours to get looking good, but it is yet another look you might want to go for.
The Cliffs on the Jurassic Coast of Dorset
The Upsides to Night Photography
When you do go out in the middle of the night, you will pretty much get the place to yourself. I really like this as you can pretty much go where you want, as long as you are legally allowed to go on that land.
The photos can really look unique, like the last shot I got in the video. This is something I love, especially when you are photographing places that are very popular in the landscape realm.
I am definitely going to do this a lot more this year and this means that my night photography won’t just be confined to the new moon, when the milkyway is out, but at all times of the moon cycle.
Have you tried this type of photography before and if so, how did you get on, click on the video and let me know in the comments section over on youtube. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
And if you liked this article and want to read more, try this post next where I talk about the different apertures and how they can affect your photographs.
If you’d like to support my channel and website, just keep watching my videos over on youtube. This helps more than anything else … and it feeds the youtube algorithm which is forever hungry!!
Thanks
Mike