With the digital camera age upon us you are now able to take professional like photos with you point and shoot camera. Today's digital cameras allow you to set the camera for special effects or special shots. One of the special modes is the night mode. This allows you to take a photo at night using the flash and still capturing the ambient light of the night. Most cameras have a dial on then with symbols and you will need to set your camera on the night mode symbol (Usually the outline of a parson on a black ground with a star in the upper corner) . This is usually used when you have people or an object that you want to highlight outside at night. I took this photo of a group in Las Vegas (first photo).

I have used this mode several times and find that I get some very interesting results. The other day I was taking my daughter and grand daughter photo for a Christmas card with a lighted tree for a background. I needed to use a flash and found out that they looked very nice but the tree was plain. Note the harsh shadow behind my granddaughter on the Santa. This is a draw back of using the flash in Auto mode with close shots. There was no warmth in the photo(2nd photo) . I remembered that the night mode was supposed to allow you to capture some warmth in the picture. I set my camera on night mode and got fantastic results(3rd photo).

In the final photo I got very lucky. I was squatting down and balancing my self in a tight corner trying to get the photo. I think that I moved after the flash went off and you see the results(last photo).