Animal photography at night

Nikon D7500 , Nikkor 105 mm 2.8 Micro, full frame
f/18, 1/125 sec, ISO 400, manual mode, freehand

Being out in the rainforest at night has a very special magic. And it is the right time for very special photos! Animal photography at night is not only a lot of fun but also a little more challenging than by day. This photo of a Velvet Gecko, Paroedura oviceps, was taken in the cloud forest of Amber Mountain in northern Madagascar. These small geckos are nocturnal and especially good to find after heavy rain. You have to be fast when taking pictures. The gecko does not stay seated for long!

You can’t get anywhere at night with automatic or program automatic. In manual mode, a high f-stop had to be selected here, as the gecko is quite small. With lower numbers, only the head or the focused eye would be in focus. For this photo, an unleashed, radio-controlled flash was also used. A second person held the flash in the appropriate position. An unleashed flash may be the best way to perfectly illuminate an animal or situation, especially at night. Depending on the movement of the animal, the flash position can be changed in a second. This avoids a lot of unnecessary “test” exposures and thus also unnecessary disturbance of the nocturnal photo motif. At the same time, you can work enormously creative with a variety of light effects. Light from below, light from above or diagonally from the side – with an unleashed flash, everything is possible without major modifications to the camera.

The flash in the picture shown comes from the top left so that the shadow falling on the gecko’s body and tail makes the photo more vivid and plastic. The flash is set strong enough to illuminate the fern behind the gecko. A flash attached to the camera would have made the body shapes and scale structure of the gecko less obvious and would have made it look “flatter”. We can only encourage you to learn the unleashed flash technique. Animal photography at night is a great opportunity for this!