Project365 - Shooting at Dusk

Introduction

I love shooting in Las Vegas. All of the bright lights & glitz make for some colourful photographs ! But in order to capture the bright lights, you need to shoot at night. But what if you want the best of both worlds ? I want to see the building as well as the lights ! So what to do ? Why, shoot at dawn or dusk, when there is some ambient light from the sun...

Shooting at dawn or dusk brings it's own issues. A photographer needs to constantly re-evaluate his settings with rapidly-changing lighting situations. The sun rises and sets quickly ! In turn, the photographer must also work quickly, while keeping an eye on the changing conditions.

The Setup

Camera - Canon 60D, lens - Canon 24-105mm f/4

We were walking around Las Vegas, and while I had scouted the shoot, I hadn't planned to run it when I did. Hence, I was a little unprepared. In the perfect world, I might have used my tripod & maybe even used a flash for some infill lighting. But we were in the right place, at the right time - make the best of it !

The Photos

Here is a pre-dusk photo of the Belaggio Resort & Casino. Since it wasn't yet dark enough, we had decent detail of the building, but the lights didn't really "pop". The image looks a little drab and dull. Based on the EXIF data, this photo was captured at 6:22 PM.

Now, compare the previous photo to this one, which was captured at 6:43 PM. What a difference 21 minutes makes ! If you take a look at the sky in both photos, you'll see an appreciable difference.

This photo was taken almost ten minutes earlier. You would think it should be brighter. The difference is that I had the ISO set to 1000. In the previous image, the ISO was at 3200, which helps make the image seem much brighter.

Lessons Learned

This set of photos, which are part of a larger set of about 50, demonstrate how quickly the lighting changes, even over the course of 30 minutes. An astute photographer needs to be constantly checking the conditions and evaluating his settings to achieve the artistic goals of the shoot.