This week, Sofia challenges us to tweak the ISO, slow down that shutter speed, and change our lenses to focus on low light. She writes, “This week we are inviting you to share your experiences, good or bad, with this challenging type of photography.” You can read her entire challenge post and check out her beautiful selection of low-light photos here.

For my response to this challenge, I picked two images captured on the San Antonio River Walk to lead off my post. The opening image was captured in the hour just before sunset. Captured with my cell phone in automatic exposure mode, the f/1.7 lens opening let in plenty enough light at 1/17th second, ISO 200. I decided to try to make it look more like a blue-hour shot in post, and apply a filter to give it a bit more “painterly” look. I lowered the exposure of the entire image in Lightroom, I then applied a radial filter around the street lamps since they were already on. Raising the exposure in the center of the filter, the image brightened around the lamp post and the tree in the background.

This image, captured with my Sony RX-100 v.5 was captured with the available light on the River Walk. Even at ISO-6400, the noise level in the image is quite low. Shot at f/4.5, 1/25 sec. In afterthought, I could have lowered the ISO and opened the lens to give the background some bokeh.

Every Christmas, the Phoenix Zoo has a holiday lights display. I have many photos from there so I picked one of my favorites, starlike lights hanging from a tree. The Sony at ISO-5000, f/2.8, and 1/30 sec focused sharply on the lights and left lots of detail in the tree and hedge in the background. I expected more bokeh at that lens opening.

I recently shared this image of a “through-the-transom” shot of one of the main dining rooms on the Norwegian Bliss on one of my Cellpic Sunday posts. Captured on an evening walk around the deck, I happened upon the scene quite by accident. The windows at the stern of the ship angled down to allow views of the sky from within the restaurant. They were covered with a sunblock screen that is left on them all of the time. Looking in from the outside, that screen added a mystical appearance to the geometrical design left by the tables and chairs.

This image was captured at f/1.8, 1/10 sec, ISO-2000 on my Samsung S20U cell phone.

While on the topic of cruising and moonlit walks on the promenade deck, on a bright moonlit night, I used my cell phone to capture this view of the Atlantic Ocean, about 75 miles (120 km) northwest of San Juan, Puerto Rico. It was captured at ISO-1000, f/1.9, 1/8 sec.

Sometimes you can fake low light. I did this one just for fun one day. When I converted the image to black-and-white, I was struck by how much it looked like a moonlit night. I cropped the image to focus more on the fisherman, then lowered the exposure a tweak, and presto! I had a night shot.

I am intrigued by Sofia’s light painting. I am going to have to give that a try sometime. It looks like it would be a fun exercise. As usual, all of the images in this post are available for pixel-peeping in HD on my Flickr site. You can find them in the album here. Join Anne next week for her photo challenge #187.

John Steiner