Van Ness Avenue, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

Standing on the median strip of Van Ness Avenue in front of San Francisco’s City Hall, I used a longish exposure—in the seconds but not the minutes– to capture moving car lights. I find an exposure time of between two and ten seconds often works best with most moving cars at night if there is some ambient light around, as in a cityscape (this was a five second exposure).

It’s amazing the difference in the way a place looks at night as opposed to day—and you never really know the night view until you shoot it.

There’s a round-up of some of my car lights at night images in Line Dance; for a car light image on a country road (and a longer exposure) check out (the logically named) Country Road; for more about night photography techniques generally see my book Creative Night: Digital Photography Tips & Techniques.