Flashless photography

Ok, so you got your first SLR camera. It's an evening, and you feel like taking some photos. You do not have a flash (except for the built in one). What are your options?

• use indoor artificial light (ceiling lamp, desk lamp)
• use outdoor artificial light (street lamps, moving cars, lit windows)

How?

Indoors:
Try to shoot things that do not move, unless you want to capture movement. Forget about shooting children (unless they are sleeping) and animals. If you are at home, set up a mini studio on top of a coffee table or a desk. Pick your favorite toy, or any small item, and arrange it the way you want. Then point the strongest source of light to it, or bring it closer to the strongest lamp in your room. Set your ISO to 800 and open up your aperture wide open. If you have a tripod, use it. Otherwise set your shutter release to "continuous", lean against a floor or something sturdy (to stabilize your arms) and shoot. Keep the shutter button pressed to get at least 10 photos in a row. Hopefully at least one of them will not be fuzzy (due to your hand movement during the exposure).

You can also try taking long exposure photos indoors, and possibly entering the exposure for few seconds. You can try changing your position a couple of times during the exposure for the "ghost" effect.


Outdoors:
Tripod is your friend in this case. If you do not have one, find a bench, railing, window sill, anything you can put your camera on to keep it still. Dial your camera to manual (M) and set the aperture to F18 or so and shutter speed to 25 seconds or so. Don't forget to keep the ISO small (at 200). To avoid shaking the camera, set it on 10 second self timer and wait 10 + 25 seconds to see the result. I find night photography addictive. Every picture comes out different, cars come and go, people move (leaving dark shadows). The photos of lonely street corner, or a busy downtown intersection result in equally big "wow" effect. The night photography is a great excuse to take a walk with your loved one, or discovering different parts of the city you live in.