Shooting in Low Light

Ask any documentary photographer and they’ll probably tell you they prefer natural light. It’s kind of a no-brainer. But, there is something fun about shooting in low/no light and in some ways you have more control. It can be intimidating at first, but when you learn to use available light in conjunction with on-camera and off-camera flash, the results can be pretty striking.

One of our favorite tricks is the light trails. This looks fancy, but it’s not too hard to pull off once you have the right gear and know what to look for. The idea is to freeze your subject so they are nice and crisp, but leave the background blurry. It breathes motion and excitement into the scene.

What You Need:

• You need a DSLR camera with a speedlite.
• Low light conditions, with external lights like candles, stage lighting, or christmas lights.
• Subjects doing interesting things like dancing.

What You Do:

1. Set up about 10-15 feet away from your main subject. Any further and your speedlite will have trouble hitting them.
2. Set your ISO for the conditions (probably somewhere between 400-1600).
3. Set your aperture between (4.5-7.1) and
4. Set shutter under 1/30. This is the key part. You can’t accomplish the look with a fast shutter.
5. Snap your photo with the camera directly pointed at the subject and let the shutter open just enough to capture the subject, then quickly and harshly jerk your camera to the left or right. Whichever way you pull your camera is the direction your light trails will go (relatively speaking).

The following is a collection of some of our favorite “low-light” shots from various events, including a number of light trail shots.