I had in my mind to do night photography after I came across several very beautiful night photographs from Tony Howell (http://www.tonyhowell.co.uk/). His photo inspired me to move my lazy butt to search for a self fulfilling photo and while his place of interest is mainly within the UK, I chose Singapore instead reason being, a safer place to do night shots while not to mention, there is nothing that Malaysia could offer in terms of beautiful night scenes with tall city buildings (with exception the KLCC Twin Towers which had been shot many times by others in which I didn’t want to repeat). So it was a Saturday and after parking my car at Jurong Point Shopping Mall, I proceed to the MRT and headed towards City Hall station. From City Hall, I wasted no time rushing (parking fees are expensive!!) to my point of interest and to my horror, it was cordoned off due to the Singapore F1 race that is to happen on 26 & 27 of September. I am not sure why it was cordoned off so early but you know lah…$$$. Anyway, I proceed towards the Marina Bay area and spent a good 30mins trying to get some decent shots. It was particularly quite difficult not to attract attention because of my tripod (which is quite big in size) and not to mention, the bulbous Sigma 24-70 f2.8 occupying the front portion of the camera body. Not only that, it was quite difficult for me to shoot with peace of mind, not because of crime but I was particularly disturbed by the sheer number of people hugging and smooching along the sea bank while worrying all the time that I may look like a perverted clown and a half indulging in some kind of fetish voyeurism. Putting that thought aside, I just went about my routine of setting up the tripod, compose, get a decent focus and just snap away. It went about for an hour or so before I decided to switch off my camera and head home, after knowing that I had bagged several decent shots.
One lesson that I had learnt from this is that whenever you’re shooting at night, just forget about the light meter. It doesn’t work and you’ve got to take a guess that the exposure level that you need while harnessing all the experience you’ve known on exposure to produce a decent shot. The traditional light meter built within the camera is only good for day shots where light is ample and getting a correct exposure is easy. However, if it is at night, the amount of dark spaces appearing in the frame coupled with bright spots of light from the building would only further confuse the light meter and as a result, your photos would have been overly blown (highlights) to kingdom come if you’d expose your photos accordingly. So the key to expose correctly is, let the light meter ‘under expose’ by one stop and you’ll get your photo to be within the ‘correct’ exposure level for night photography (it depends on how much light the camera is receiving too, so judge according to situation).
