Photograph your muse during the day and turn it into a night photo

Saturday 12 February 2022, 20:10 by Nando Harmsen | 4,403 views | 1 comment

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

You can take a photo of someone during the day in a very simple way, yet still give it the look of a night photo. All you need is a flash that you can use away from your camera. I explain how to do this in a few simple steps.

A normal daylight photo. There is nothing wrong with it, but you can give it a different twist. Turn it into a night photo.
You do not always have to go out at night to take a night photo with your model. In fact, this can be a real challenge in the dark, because focusing can be a problem. If you have a flash that you can use away from your camera, that is all you need.

I chose a photo with a nighttime feel during the love shoot of Eric and Iris. For this, I placed a flash behind the couple and used a remote trigger to control it. A second flash from the front provided extra lighting. This is called strobist photography.

A photo showing where the flashes are positioned. Of course, this is just one of the many possibilities available to you.
Before I explain this further, I first want to explain the basics of flash photography. There is a difference between the exposure from the flash and the exposure for the surroundings. You use shutter speed, ISO and aperture to set the exposure for the surroundings. You can use the flash intensity to expose your subject correctly.

I used this principle here. By lowering the exposure for the surroundings by as much as 3.3 stops, the forest became a dark forest with a nighttime feel. The flash I used as the main light was set so that enough light fell on Eric and Iris to get a good exposure.

A photo without flash. It is a test photo to set the exposure for the surroundings correctly so that it looks like a night photo. I underexposed by 3.3 stops.
A second flash behind the couple provided an extra rim light, or hair light. This added another dimension to the photo, but it is not strictly necessary. Because the light stand came into the frame, I had to remove it in Photoshop.

The flashes ensure that Eric and Iris are well lit. Because the surroundings remain so dark, it looks as if the photo was taken at night. I did have to remove the stand in Photoshop.

The final result. It is something different from a normal daylight photo.
The final result is a night photo of Eric and Iris, taken during the day. All you need is a flash that can be controlled from a distance.

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About the author

Nando Harmsen has been photographing for more than 40 years. He specialises in wedding photography and landscape photography. Nando also gives talks, workshops, masterclasses and photo trips, and regularly reviews new and interesting equipment.

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1 comment

Donald Willemsen wrote on Monday 14 February 2022 at 10:08 | reply
Cool article. Thanks for the good explanation. I think it's a nice idea. Still, I notice something about the end result. You can see very clearly that a flash was used and that this makes the colors come across a bit cooler. I don't like that as much.
I regularly photograph portraits in my studio and of course use softboxes. In the end result, it's much less noticeable that it's flash light and that the colors are a bit warmer/more natural. Is there a way to make it look a bit more natural? Or do you have to adjust the white balance and such afterwards in Ps?
Translated from Dutch.

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