--- title: How to Photograph at Night | TIME description: Photographs by Stuart Palley canonical: https://time.com/video/UkEDGERp/ og:title: How to Photograph at Night og:description: Photographs by Stuart Palley og:url: https://time.com/video/UkEDGERp/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/UkEDGERp/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: How to Photograph at Night twitter:description: Photographs by Stuart Palley twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/UkEDGERp/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # How to Photograph at Night > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME Subscription: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition TIME is a general-interest news organization founded in 1923, reporting on the people, ideas and issues shaping the world. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: How to Photograph at Night [Watch (HLS stream): How to Photograph at Night](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/UkEDGERp.m3u8) (4:11)  _Published 2016-08-09. Photographs by Stuart Palley_ --- Jul 27, 2023 8:35 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Photographing the Donald](/video/nag4BEcH/) ### Photographing the Donald [How to Photograph a Whale](/video/2GUJJOs5/) ### How to Photograph a Whale [Photographing the Chilean Miners](/video/mUKSyXxt/) ### Photographing the Chilean Miners --- ## Transcript [ MUSIC ] I fell in love with photographing at night both for how cool the product looks and how beautiful the pictures can be to see this capture of the milky way when it's brilliance. So, this is placed in a different light that's not day light. Its all about capturing the sense of scale that photographing the Earth or the sky at night creates. [ BLANK_AUDIO ] Iceland is an environment very much where nature is always present. [ INAUDIBLE ] [ MUSIC ] Timing the photograph and neither certainly a critical aspect. It is literally ten times harder when it's cold and you're in the dark and tired And fumbling around for stuff and looking for views. So always try and scout things out in advance if you can. 90 % of it is preparation and 10 % of it is the actual execution. I think the biggest thing when you're photographing at night is to be open minded. Sometimes conditions are going to change and your pictures are not going to turn out How you thought despite the biggest amount of planning both with equipment and logistics and weather. And that's something you just have to live with. And you have to enjoy the pursuit and the process of it. [ MUSIC ] There's a few apps I like to use to plan my shoots. The first app that I use it's called Dark Sky Finder which is a map of how bright and how dark places are. I also use an app called Photopills and it actually superimposes a 3- Dimensional view of the sky based on your location and where you are. It'll also show you when it will be completely dark, twilight, sunrise, or sunset so it's a very robust and useful... Useful app for a lot of the timing that is needed to pull off these night shots. [ MUSIC ] Here, natural shake and movement will make image the blurry so having a tripod is critical for longer exposures at night. I've had the same tripod for nine years. and I've beaten it up. It's been all over the world with me and it's well worth the investment. The other important investment you want to make is a full frame camera because it gives you a wider angle of view and also better high iso capability. Start with an iso of 1600 and an exposure of 30 seconds to see how you need to change the exposure to properly Create your vision and the image. When you take a long exposure you're essentially capturing all that light over period of time so what the camera showing is even more enhanced and what we're seeing with the human eye. The technology and the tools are just means to put the vision that's in my mind into to reality [ MUSIC ] Generally speaking I will photograph just under starlight. It's good to have a headlamp or a flashlight that has a red filter or a red lense because the red light allows you to see at night but also retain your vision more strongly. [ MUSIC ] What I like doing too is doing some basic light painting. But I prefer to use a LED light and sometimes fill in the foreground. [ MUSIC ] At the end of the day, this is a creative process. And you don't want to get stuck into one method. Document or photograph things that have a resonance with you. If you feel an emotion to it, or a reaction to it. that might be worth capturing. You want to be so in the zone that you are losing track of time, that you're totally focused and 100 % in on creating something that is wholly uniquely yours. [ MUSIC ] ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"How to Photograph at Night","description":"Photographs by Stuart Palley","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/UkEDGERp/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2016-08-09T23:29:31.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/UkEDGERp.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/video/UkEDGERp/","duration":"PT4M11S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/video/UkEDGERp/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}} ```