Night photography can be tricky. It presents various challenges. The most obvious of which is that it is dark. How do you focus in the dark? How do you compose your image if you can't see? How do you cope with noise (since you are probably shooting at high ISO)? I am not going to address of these issues today as you can read a previous blog on night photography. The main question of this blog is how do you compose in the dark. Some photographers' answer to that question is simple; they don't! They compose when there is still enough light and then sit and wait. Perhaps patience is a virtue that I need to work on harder but that solution just does not work for me. When there is enough light to see I want to be shooting other images.

          Another obvious solution is to take a flash light. Illuminate the scene, compose, turn off the light and shoot. I do not particularly like that solution because the light closes down your eyes' pupils so that when you turn the light off you can't see well. In fact, it may take your eyes upto twenty minutes to readjust. To circumvent this problem many photographer use a green or red tinted light which do not seem to affect the eyes that much. This may work for you. In my case it often does not work well because when I am in a workshop there are multiple photographers present which means that you cannot turn your light on when you want to (others are shooting).

          Take a loot at this image and see what little trick I use that works for me:

Do you see what I do? Most people will look at this images and say, "no, I don't get it." Remember we are talking about composition so look at the position of the camera ... My little trick is to shoot from low down. There are various reasons why I prefer to shoot night images from down there:

• 1. By pointing the camera up and shooting from low down the silhouettes of whatever is in the foreground becomes more visible which helps me to compose better. It helps you to see the shapes which you will not see if not in front of the brighter sky.

• 2. I don't do that much night photography so I do not own a lense wider than 16mm. By placing my camera really low down I get to include more of the sky. In this case I get to include more of the milkyway, which is really the point of night photography - it is all about the sky. The foreground simply gives you scale, interest, and perspective. The foreground is supposed to be fairly small in the image. You really maximize the sky by going down low and pointing upwards.

The next time you are out shooting at night. Go low down as it helps you to compose and it may just give you a better image.