Nighttime Couple Session

Letting Go of Perfection

Nighttime couple sessions aren’t something I do often. Photographing couples at night in the middle of the city is definitely not my regular jam. When you first start learning photography everything is very technical. Learning Manual Mode is a struggle and a lot of us become obsessed with “the settings”.

What shutter speed should I use? What about ISO? What even is that?

But then you get it and you feel like you can do anything. Until you find the next thing you have never done before, that is. 

Working with couples is so much fun, and for this session I wanted to challenge myself to do something new and exciting.

Working at nighttime without the use of any lighting equipment can be challenging. I knew I would be dealing with a lot of artificial lights from street lamps and cars as well as high ISO, grain, etc.

Instead of running away from these things I wasn’t used to, I decided to embrace them. Here are the results and some tips in case you are looking for a new challenge.

Planning

When trying something new, planning is key. You need to go into it knowing what you are trying to achieve and having a plan for how you are going to do it.

To plan this session I chose a couple I knew a little about. I had photographed mom and kids once and followed them on social media. I could tell that they were so absolutely in love with each other and that they would be perfect for this project.

Since this session was a creative personal project of mine, I focused on new places, technique and lighting situations. I wanted the shoot to have a certain feel, not a specific look, so I let them come up with their own styling, which turned out great.

Embrace Weird Lighting

If you ask most couples or family photographers they will tell you that orange street or indoor lighting would not be their favorite kind of light, not even a close second. We all love golden, beautiful sunlight that fills the pictures with that dreamy glow.

In this case you are going to have to embrace whatever comes your way and just work with it.

Trying to fix the light in this situation might be a struggle. I recommend embracing it. Make use of the street lights, let it set the mood. 

Learn more about shooting in low light with Mastering Low Light!

If you move in somewhere indoors, pay particular attention how the light affects the colors in your picture. How does it reflect it off the furniture, walls and your subject’s clothes

Make Use of Unusual Spaces

While I was planning for this shoot I made a mental list of all unusual spaces I could utilize in that area that would add interest to the photos.

Here are some that I came up with:

• Parking Garages
• Book Shops
• Record Shops
• Plant Shops
• Historic Buildings
• Interesting murals
• Parking Lots
• Bars with Cool Decor and Lighting
• Exposed brick buildings
• Bridges
• Elevators 

Although you won’t be able to get to all of these, it’s great to have a variety of scenarios in your head to help you when you get stuck.

Plan Your Shutter Speed

What better time to play with low shutter speed than when you are in a low light situation? Whether you decide to go all in and bring a tripod to do some amazing and highly technical blurry images or you just want to add a fun element of movement and blur to your photos (like me) , nighttime couple sessions are the perfect time to experiment with this.

Learn more about mastering your settings with Goodbye Auto. Hello Manual.

After the Shoot

Ok, so now you have all these cool shots and you are so looking forward to editing them.

When you open them on Lightroom there’s a big chance you will feel panicked and a little defeated. 

It is very likely that the skin tones will be all over the place. This lighting is far from even or delicate. 

That’s when you will do the most learning with this session. And the most important thing to learn here is to let go of perfectionism.

Go back to your intention with this shoot. What words did you want it to convey?For example mine were love, fun, closeness. I had to keep reminding myself that not everything is about perfect skin tones and white balance. 

Sometimes, it’s not about how technically accurate your shots are. It’s about a feeling you want people to feel when they look at your work. 

So, forget everything you expect your work to look like for this one shoot and focus only on what you want it to feel like. I guarantee you will have a blast.

Editing Tips

I played a lot with the HSL panel for this session. The lighting situations were very warm so I had to desaturate the oranges a lot.

I also added grain to the images because I wanted them to have that nostalgic feeling and they were going to be grainy anyway because of the low light.

Instead of adjusting exposure I adjusted mainly shadows and blacks in order not to blow out the highlights coming from the strong light sources.

Black and white edits worked really well for the scenarios where the artificial light was too much for my taste.

Check out the Art & Soul Black and White Preset Collection!

It’s ok for the whole shoot not to have the same exact look. Specially when you are using so many different locations and lighting scenarios in the same session.

Hope you found this post on nighttime couple sessions interesting and useful!

For more inspiration, follow Evelynne on Instagram!