Night Photography. Start at the water, look for the light

It was a beautiful night in San Diego last night; an almost full moon, wispy clouds and temperature in the mid 60’s.  I decided to get the camera and tripod out and take a trip down to the Bay to see if I could improve my night photography skills.  Shooting at night is a bit difficult because you have to allow for longer exposures and have to carefully compose your shots so that you are not bringing in too much or too little light.  For example, you might see a great shot  but smack dab in the middle of that shot is a street light with blaring light that will drown out everything else with obnoxious lens flares.    Anyway, you can take some very nice photos at night. I prefer to shoot along the water because you can get nice reflections and the steady ripple of water flattens and smooths out nicely on long exposures.  It can be a lot of fun after a night photo shoot, taking your camera home, uploading the pictures and seeing if any magic happened during the night.  This is one picture I took right near SeaPort Village near some boats. Not a perfect shot but we’re getting there with practice.