night photography

One of the most valuable lessons that I apply to photography on a daily basis was actually taught to me by a theater professor in college, well before I had a passion for taking pictures. “The most interesting characters are the ones that struggle between good and bad. Show me this conflict,” Dr Edwards said, “because it is this conflict that we are drawn to.”

Jim Goldstein is a full-time professional photographer based in San Francisco, CA. He captures landscapes and nature, and is an established travel photographer. He also embraces social media, and is highly active on Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, and Google + amongst others, such as Photo.net. We took some time to talk to Jim about his techniques, social media strategies, how landscapes inspire him, and his new eBook.

One of the main reasons why photographers lug their cameras around when the sun goes down, is to capture the night sky. For a lot of us, this means leaving the bright lights of the city in search of where the stars shine the brightest. Until recently, the only way a photographer could successfully capture the night sky was with long exposures that resulted in star trails. If you wanted to capture star points, or a more celestial night, exposures needed to be less than 30 seconds. Otherwise, the earth’s rotation turned the points into trails. But with DSLRs now capable of capturing cleaner ISO output at 1600 and 3200, we are entering a new celestial era that would make Van Gogh proud! 

So whether you choose the drama of the longer star trails or the subtler star points, here are some tips to follow.

Photographs of lightning aren't particularly difficult to take. It's mostly a matter of being prepared to get a good image when lightning appears.

My friend Christina Lawrie is much better at photographing lightning than I am. Here's how she does it.

When traveling during holiday season, many people don't want to bring a studio's worth of gear with them. But taking pictures in low light won't always give users the most pleasing results. Here are a couple of workarounds to get better photos while carrying less gear.

One of the top pro photographers at BetterPhoto.com is Jim Zuckerman, who loves to share his vision, as well as his techniques.

We all know that the best parts of the shooting day are around sunrise and sunset. But you don’t have to stop when the Sun goes down. Star trails are a really fun way to make some unique images and squeeze a little more photography into your photo safari or vacation. Star trails used to be exclusive to film cameras. The high noise found in long exposures of early digital cameras made digital star trails a mess.