Create a Night Photo of Your Model During the Day

Thursday 27 May 2021, 20:02 by Nando Harmsen | 5,615 views | 0 comments

This article was translated from Dutch with the help of AI. Read the original.

You set the exposure with your aperture and shutter speed. But you can treat flash light separately. This lets you set the exposure of your background very differently from the light on your model.

Creating a night photo of your model during the day is then very easy.

A photo of Eric and Iris in a forest during the day. It is a matter of using the right camera and flash settings.
This is known as strobist photography. It is not studio photography, but photography on location with separate flashes. Although you do not necessarily have to use the flash away from the camera.

If you have a basic knowledge of flash photography, you know that the exposure of the background can be set separately from the flash light. This allows you to blend flash light with the existing light effortlessly, or to ignore the existing light completely.

The second case, completely ignoring the existing light, is what we do in a studio. There, the flash light becomes the main light. The ambient light is so weak compared with the flash light that it is barely visible, or not visible at all.

In the studio, you (usually) only want to use the flash light, not the ambient light.
The first case, combining existing light and flash light, is perfect for lifting shadows or adding emphasis to a particular area of the photo. Usually, that is your model's face. If necessary, you can underexpose the surroundings a little so that your model appears to stand out.

A separate flash with a softbox lights Lisa. The surroundings are deliberately underexposed by 2 stops.
The trick for creating a night photo of your model during the day is similar, in a way. You can underexpose the surroundings so much that they become as dark as they would be in the evening or at night.

If the exposure from the flash remains unchanged, however, it looks as though your model is standing in a night-time setting.

I lit Sabrina with a speedlight in a softbox. Underexposing the surroundings by three stops gives the image a lovely night-time look.
Whether this type of photo works does depend on the amount of daylight and the strength of your flash. In full sunlight, it will be particularly difficult. The flash light has to be brighter than the ambient light.

However, you will not be able to give a photo taken on a sunny day a real night-time feel.

Flashing away sunlight is particularly difficult. If your flash is powerful enough, it can be done. But on a sunny day, you will never get a real night-time feel like in this photo of rapper Maliki.
Also bear in mind that you do not have night-time lighting, such as street lamps and similar things. An environment without artificial light is recommended for this trick.

This way, you can give the photo you take during the day a realistic evening or night-time feel.

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