Bright lights against a dark background often create attractive and exciting scenes. Here’s a simple tip for making your nightlife photos appear tack sharp.

Bright Lights of Broadway (or elsewhere)
You may be surprised to know that many night scenes have an abundance of light. A dark background can often fool us and the camera’s exposure metering too. In this photo, the haze surrounding the marquee is caused by overexposure.	To make the scene and theater marquee appear without the haze, I’ve used the camera adjustments to provide less exposure. For this shot, I’ve dialed back the exposure by -2 stops, making the lettering appear sharp.

Today’s digital cameras make it easy for you to snap exciting action photos. Here’s an obvious tip for taking advantage of one of your camera’s impressive capability.

Patience Counts
A common practice is to snap as soon as the action begins. Here our young swimmer has started his run down the diving board and I’ve stopped the action using the camera’s Sport mode.	A few minutes later, a second diver took to the air. This time, I waited patiently until his body was fully extended in the air – just before his huge belly flop. The “pose” tells the story.

When your subject is moving, the usual way to capture the action is to use a short shutter speed. This freezes the action, but is there a better way to “show” the action?

Capturing the motion
By using a short shutter speed, you can freeze the action of your subject. For this shot, I’ve used Sport mode to stop the motion of our young girl.	By deliberately using a short shutter speed e.g. 1/30th or 1/15th of a second, I’ve captured the subject as she’s moving. While the young girl is no longer in sharp focus, we can almost feel the swinging motion.

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