Photography Culture

How Andreas Levers Does His Beautiful “At Night” Series of Photos

Chris Gampat
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02/09/2018
2 Mins read
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Last Updated on 02/09/2018 by Mark Beckenbach

All images by Andreas Levers. Used with permission.

We’ve featured the work of Andreas Levers here on the website before a number of times, but recently many of you fell head over heels for his At Night series. We saw a lot of comments asking about how he did the series, and so we decided that we’d talk to Andreas and see just exactly how At Night was done.

Your images from At Night seem to be very atmospheric. How exactly are these images achieved? Do you shoot in a lot of fog?

Andreas: The weather is indeed the key ingredient. Unfortunately the days when the fog is this thick is few and far between around here. When the forecast looks promising I have my bag ready to go and a list of locations that I want to visit. I use a tripod, but fortunately the image quality at higher ISO is so good with current gear, that most exposures take only a few seconds. To have enough leverage in post processing I only shoot raw files.

It seems like you go for very neon-like colors, and that those are a big part of the process is that true?

Andreas: Yes – I carefully choose the locations to achieve the retro-futuristic look. So modern architecture or sober infrastructure is best suited for my photography. My main inspiration comes from movies like Blade Runner, Drive, Matrix, Dark City and many more. I try to emulate the intentional color casts they use to convey an specific atmosphere in my photography.

These images pretty much resemble paintings; what sort of post production methods are you doing?

Andreas: I use Adobe Camera Raw to develop the raw shots. Most important is an intentionally shifted white balance and split toning. I keep some of the past looks as presets to quickly try different color gradings and adjust them based the individual images. Another ingredient are local adjustments, primarily contrast and exposure, to focus the attention on key elements. Subtle adjustments of clarity and sharpness add further cues to guide the viewer’s eye.

So what are the main take aways here:

  1. Shoot RAW.
  2. Find fog.
  3. Look for scenes with the right amount of contrast and light cutting through the fog.
  4. Shift the colors accordingly to get just the right look.
Andreas Levers at night city fog How-to images lighting photoshop presets
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Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.