Redline Challenge: low light photography tips from the pros

Shooting in low light is no easy task, and that applies to pro photographers as much as it does to amateurs. When professionals are on assignment, they have to come up with the goods, light or no light, delivering a coherent, high quality body of work to satisfy clients. When the light disappears, there's little difference between capturing poignant photojournalism for The New York Times, shooting outdoor scenes in a wintry Lapland or taking fashion shots in the relative comfort of the studio. In all cases, professional photographers have to be adept at overcoming whatever lighting obstacles they face.

So how do they do it? What advice can they offer those photographers who choose to take on the Redline Challenge, which invites photographers worldwide to push their creative and technical boundaries by exploring the relationship between light and darkness? We spoke to four Canon Ambassadors working in different photographic genres to ask about shooting under the toughest of lighting conditions: two internationally celebrated documentary photographers, Aline Deschamps, based in Lebanon, and Tasneem Alsultan, based in Saudi Arabia; Eliška Sky, an award-winning artistic and fashion photographer based in London, UK; and Valtteri Hirvonen, a wilderness photographer based in Finland. Each pro shared their tips for tackling "light in the dark", showing us how the challenge of shooting in low light can be overcome by photographers in any genre.

For even more tips and insights, don't miss the videos from Canon Ambassadors on the Redline Challenge YouTube playlist.

Shooting documentary portraits in low light – often indoors – can be extremely tough, especially when authenticity is key. Having so few options forces you to think in unconventional ways and to utilise whatever the surrounding environment provides. French-Thai documentary photographer Aline Deschamps is based in Beirut and her work focuses on issues relating to identity, gender and migration. She often works inside people's homes in limited or very poor lighting conditions, which forces her to get even more creative with her surroundings to generate the atmosphere she would normally rely on light to provide.

Wilderness and nature photographer Valtteri Hirvonen is familiar with shooting in extremely harsh conditions, often in mountains or the Arctic, miles from civilisation in temperatures as low as -30°C. Like Aline, he also advises playing around with whatever light source you have to hand and using multiple light sources to create different effects in low-light situations. "I have been experimenting with lighting some scenes using my mobile phone," he says – "whatever light, tone or colour comes to mind. You can always be creative with the light temperature using filters. If you're shooting just with LEDs or a traditional halogen lamp, you can mix those things up. I usually have three or four different lights with me when I go out and I choose which I want for a particular look.

"I usually have some Speedlites packed as well, because those give a totally different feel to other types of lighting. I have a radio trigger for my Canon flash so I can just position it somewhere and either leave it where it is or trigger it from wherever I am in the scene. You can mix all these different techniques and use them in just one frame."

Visual artist Eliška Sky creates highly stylised, bold and frequently surreal images, often with an underlying message. What makes low-light shooting particularly tough for Eliška when she's photographing in the studio is managing how shadows fall over her subject. "I like to recreate low light in the studio," she says. "I usually use flash, paired with a modelling lamp, so the whole scene is quite dark and I can see only where the light is going to hit.

"If I'm working with flash in combination with a slow shutter speed and using laser or light painting techniques, I tend to work in complete darkness. In those intense instances I don't want the natural ambient light to interfere with the slow shutter speed."

In these situations, besides pre-visualising the shadows, the main challenge for Eliška is getting accurate focus. "Obviously, I need to focus first, so it's wise to bring an assistant or a friend, with a torch or mobile phone," she says.

"I almost always use manual setting, especially in the studio, and because I'm shooting in the dark, usually an exposure of two and a half or three seconds is enough for what I want to do in terms of the light painting."

Tasneem Alsultan relishes working in low light, whether for her documentary work focusing on gender and social issues in the Middle East or for the wedding photography she does between assignments. "It keeps me on my toes, keeps me creative," she says. "I always look for different ways to use framing and lighting, while making sure I do it in a way that doesn't make a bride feel like they're being photographed in the same or a similar location. I have to be creative in documenting different moments to keep the viewer's attention."

Tasneem advises changing the way you see darkness, using it as a technical advantage to allow full creative and technical control over frames. "In low light, you have to go really extreme with off-camera flash, making it more dramatic than natural light. But the benefits are that you can attract the viewer's eye to something you want them to look at by illuminating it. Equally, you can distract from something you don't want them to see by keeping it dark, hiding it with shadows. In this way, you're utilising the darkness and combining it with flash to create theatre, drama and beauty."

"If I'm shooting a documentary series, telling real-life stories, I don't use flash," says Tasneem. "If I'm photographing for National Geographic or The New York Times, I don't want to play around with photos at all – nothing can be staged, everything must be real. But I can still be creative with the darkness in the same way I would be when using flash. I'll utilise low light in the streets, in my neighbourhood, even indoors. With my Canon EOS 5D Mark IV or EOS 5DS R, I'll drop no lower than 1/80 sec, and I will use a wide aperture value of about f/1.2 or f/1.4 when shooting people. This lets enough light into the camera to expose my subject, but also allows me to isolate them against dark backdrops. If it's more than one person I'm photographing, I'll go up to f/3.5, trusting the performance of the EOS 5D Mark IV in low light and its ability to make such shots look very natural.

"I would advise using prime lenses, as these often have the widest maximum apertures. I use the Canon EF 24mm f/1.4L II USM and EF 35mm f/1.4L II USM, as the extremely wide apertures let me photograph natural, beautiful low light here in Saudi Arabia. I also have a Canon EF 85mm f/1.2L II USM for portraits – even the EF 50mm f/1.2L USM lens is great, but that's my secret for low light."