Low-light photography

The golden colours of this sunset cityscape echoes the wealth in downtown Dubai. That combined with an incredible low but defined sun in the bottom of the frame, and a seemingly impossibly lined up flock of birds keep something interesting in the top of the frame.

This is such a powerful image, combining two aspects of long exposure that many photographers love: wire wool spinning and waterfalls. The cool, blue tones in the water contrast the warm, orange tones from the spinning wool to create interest all the way throughout the frame. There’s also a spot of light in the centre stone to lift the foreground slightly.

The photographer has done well to capture a pet cat as it was running from room to room during a thunderstorm. The extremely low light is combated with a high ISO at 1600, and is thrown into a silhouette by the streetlights outside which also light up the rain on the windows. A purple evening sky is cut perfectly by the middle fixtures of the window to divide the scene.

We are incredibly impressed with this shot. What you see if a long exposure taken from a plane. Normally, if the camera is on a moving platform a long exposure is a bad idea, but the photographer has managed to keep relative sharpness in the stars above, maintained a steady tracking of an on-coming plane’s light trails and also given the impression of speed with the blurred clouds in the bottom of the frame.

Taken in the canyon passes in LA, the photographer started at 2am to capture the light trails of miners driving to and from work. The gentle morning sunlight casts a warm glow across the peaks and the dimly lit sky.

This is such a clean, sharp and professional looking image. It comes to some surprise that this was taken in a bathroom against some black card with a torch light bouncing off the door. It’s even captured on entry-level kit but it has simple side-lighting, with a fantastic rim-light around the right-edge of the iron. The composition transforms it from a simple iron into a great piece of art.

There’s an ethereal quality to this shot that comes from the distant mist just above the viaduct. This feeling is enhanced by the reflection of the tall, slender columns in the river which are blurred into a hazy detail thanks to the fifteen second exposure. We also see the stars above and the milky way galaxy towering vertically in the top of the frame.

Taken during sunset the clouds which were once in the sky have all but evaporated leaving a clear sky – clear enough to give the windmill enough negative space to clearly define the shape of its blades. Waiting until the blades are in the right position to create an X-shape is the icing on the cake.

With the bears moving through a swamp covered by cotton flowers in the late evening, it almost feels like they’re heading home after a long day of work. Shot at 1/200 sec the moving bears are sharp, and detail in their fur are still retained thanks to a little ambient light.