I've read a lot of magazines talking about lighting up landscapes at night for some dramatic shots. Same goes for macro photography! The key is to take many shots with different lighting angles, because you never know which shot is the winner until you pull it up on the computer screen. A few obvious things have to be observed when shooting nighttime macros:

• Manually focus your shots
• Use long exposures (tripod is an obvious requirement!)
• Observe the wind conditions carefully
• Flashlight is required

My main subjects were cactus and flowers, which have some great features to work with. Because I'm using a tripod and long exposure, I can set the aperture to basically whatever I want and keep the ISO at 100. After my tripod is all setup, I light up the flashlight (torch if your in England), and create dramatic shadows on my subject.

Lighting the subjects from different angles produces drastically different results. You can create tons of mood, or an alien world by being able to control the lighting and camera angle of the macro subjects.

I'm using Canon's 100mm EF macro lens, which let's me stay about 6 inches to a foot away from my subject. My Rebel XT allows me to lockup the mirror which helps reduce camera vibration when taking long exposures.

The cactus is great because it's a solid subject, non-affected by wind. But, when you shoot some flimsy plants and flowers, low wind conditions is very important! Getting these pictures took patience, because of the subtle wind movements.

Macro photography at night opens up a whole new world of possibilities! Give it a shot and post your results as a comment.