Observatory at night

After shooting this lovely house during two visits in the daytime, it was time to shoot the classic twilight image. Trouble is, it was 2 weeks after the summer solstice, and sunset wasn’t until just before 11pm. It’s getting harder to set off for work at 10 in the evening nowadays. The owners were having supper out, so I set up by myself – using my Nikon D800 and my old-school Manfrotto 055 tripod, which almost needs it’s own vehicle to get from A to B. It extends to about 8ft, which makes it ideal for using on big exterior shoots. 

As I’ve detailed in previous posts, here and here and here, twilight shots need some planning, then very quick execution due to the fact that the light only lasts for about 15 minutes before everything goes completely dark. The ideal time is about 30 minutes after sunset when there is a small amount of light coming from below the horizon which is just enough to provide a dark blue sky, and a base light on the building itself. All the interior lights are switched on, and a flashgun or hot light are placed on a monopod with a remote control trigger ready for action.
The base exposures for sky and building are tackled first – stopping up and down to get different tones which can be incorporated into a final shot later. This gives a good twenty frames to get stuck into. The next task is to cover various parts of the building and garden with pops of diffused flash. You can shoots as many of these as you like in the time you have, because you’re going to use the areas of light selectively and subjectively to give a pleasing overall look to the whole final shot.

I shot about 80 exposures overall in the end, and spent a good 90 minutes experimenting with different combinations of light effects to end up with the final result. You need to balance the interior lights, garden lights, and the tones in the sky/building fascia to come up with something special. I love doing these, & they only work on taller houses with lots of windows. I didn’t get home until almost 1am in the end, so they’re not an everyday task thankfully.

See more examples of my high-end residential property photography at my main website.