A Guide To Snapping Perfect Holiday Instagram Pictures At Night
If you find it tricky to snap great pictures after dark, you’re not alone! Picture-perfect opportunities don’t always occur under ideal lighting conditions. If you want to practise your night-time photography skills during your sailing trip, here are a few of our top tips.
Sharp Shots Rely on a Steady Camera
Low-light conditions often result in blurry photographs. Using a tripod will usually give the best results, but this is far from your only option. You can use any solid surface to help to keep your hand steady, or you could prop up your phone or camera somewhere safe and make use of the self-timer function to snap some epic memories of your holiday.
If there isn’t anywhere available to rest your phone, however, don’t panic! You might be surprised at just how effective it is to keep both of your elbows held tight against your body while holding your breath as you take the photograph.
Consider the Light
Great images rely on utilising available sources of light, and sometimes you’ll find that you need to get a bit creative to capture a memory. Look for street lights, illuminated shop signs or even light from towns or villages in the distance. Different sources of light will help to create different atmospheres and your holiday is the ideal opportunity to experiment with your creativity!
Capture Sunrises and Sunsets on your Sailing Trip
Throughout your trip, you’ll have the opportunity to witness some of the most spectacular sunrises and sunsets you’ll ever see and it’s totally not cliché to want to capture as many of them as possible. Sunrises and sunsets also make stunning backgrounds to group shots and will add an extra point of visual interest to your landscapes and seascapes, so utilise them whenever you have the opportunity!
Set to HDR Mode
Most smartphones now have the ability to shoot HDR, or High Dynamic Range. For the non-techies, that means the phone takes multiple photos at varying exposures from dark to light and sandwiches them together to give you a pretty good looking photo when there isn’t much light. Pretty nifty I’d say.
Post-Production
If you’re struggling with the graininess or colours in any of your images, try converting them to black and white. Contrast and grain often make for excellent black and white images, with bundles of personality and intrigue. You can also try adding a little fade to a photo to mask grain while creating a film-like photo!
