How to shoot low light at Sandhya Arghya, bonfires and dusk

To shoot well in low light at Sandhya Arghya, a bonfire or an evening function, arrive early, use your widest aperture, shoot in RAW, keep your shutter speed at or above 1 divided by your focal length, and expose for the faces rather than the bright flames or sky. Then accept that you cannot be everywhere, and collect guests' phone photos for the moments you miss.

Evening light changes fast. At Chhath Puja 2026, Sandhya Arghya falls on Sunday, 15 November, and one city-wise calendar puts sunset in Patna at about 5:02 PM. That leaves a short window where the sky glows and the ghat is still readable, followed by a quick slide into darkness. Lohri bonfires in mid-January and winter weddings have the same problem, with warm light on faces and a dark world beyond it.

Dusk at the ghat: Sandhya Arghya

Start before the crowd arrives. Walk the ghat in daylight to find where vratins will stand, where the diyas will float and where you can shoot without blocking families. The sun sets fast, and once the ritual begins you will not have time to move around much. A steady place on the steps or the bank is worth more than a perfect angle you cannot hold.

Shoot as wide as your lens allows. A fast lens in the f/1.4 to f/2.8 range lets in more light, which means you can keep your shutter speed high enough to avoid blur. Camera shake is the main enemy in dim light, and the old rule still holds: when hand-holding, use a shutter speed at or faster than the focal length of your lens, so a 50mm lens needs about 1/60 or quicker. People standing in water or moving a soop will blur at slower speeds, so aim a bit faster for them.

Expose for the person, not the sky. If you meter the bright sunset, the vratin becomes a silhouette, which can be beautiful on purpose but is a problem when the family wants faces. Check the back of the screen after a few frames and adjust. Shoot in RAW so you can recover shadows and fix white balance later, and avoid flash on the ghat, since it flattens the warm light and can distract people during the ritual.

Firelight: bonfires and evening functions

A bonfire is a bright light source in a dark scene, so cameras often overexpose the flames or underexpose the faces. One useful tip from Canon is to shoot just after the sun goes down, when there is still enough light in the sky for detail around the fire but the flames stand out. That balance is easier to expose than a fire in full darkness. For fireside portraits, Canon suggests Manual mode, an aperture of f/1.8 or your lens's widest, a shutter speed of about 1/200 and Auto ISO, which lets the camera adjust sensitivity as the light changes. For sparklers, an aperture around f/3.5 to f/5.6 and about 1/125 with Auto ISO is a sensible start.

Do not raise ISO higher than you need. Higher ISO lets you shoot in the dark but adds grain, so it is a trade off. It also helps to place people close to the fire, because a brighter subject lets you use a lower ISO and a faster shutter speed.

White balance matters too. Fire is warm, and Canon notes that a setting of around 6000K keeps that warmth, while a much lower setting makes the scene bluer. If you shoot RAW you can change this later, so do not stress about getting it perfect in the moment. Warm is part of the mood at Lohri, a sangeet lawn or a winter wedding, so avoid correcting it so far that the fire looks grey.

The moments you cannot reach

Even with perfect settings, you cannot cover everything. At the ghat, a cousin might be at the far end holding a diya while you are focused on the main vratin. At a bonfire, children run behind the circle while you shoot the dance in front. At a sangeet, a grandmother laughs at the back of the hall at the moment you are near the stage. These small scenes are often the ones families love most, and your camera simply was not there.

Guests have phones, and many recent phones handle dim light surprisingly well. They are standing in places you cannot get to, at angles you will never have. The trouble is that those photos sit on dozens of phones and rarely reach the family. People send a few in WhatsApp, which compresses them and buries them in chat, and the rest stay forgotten.

Getting guests' photos into one album

A shared album fixes this. Google Photos shared albums are a good option if most guests already use Google Photos, and Google says anyone with the link can view and add to the album. A Drive folder works well for the photographer's own delivery. For a mixed crowd at a ghat or a bonfire, Rollout is built for this. It is a free app on Android and iPhone, where the organiser creates an event and shares one QR code or link, and guests scan it, install the app and join. Every photo from every guest's phone lands in one shared album, live, in full quality, with no WhatsApp compression.

As the photographer, you can also upload your own edited pictures from a computer into the same album, so your best frames and the guests' candid ones sit side by side. Ask the family to set up the event before the function and to share the QR code in their group, so guests can install the app at home, not at the ghat in the dark with a crowd around. A family member can show the code on a phone or a printed card at the entrance.

When the album fills up, face search helps. Each person takes a selfie and sees just the photos they are in, which saves you from fielding requests for individual pictures. Free events last 30 days, so remind the family to download what they want to keep, and bigger paid events exist if the gathering is large.

A simple plan for your next dusk shoot

Scout the location in daylight, pack a fast lens and a spare battery, and plan to shoot just after sunset for the best balance of sky and fire. Tell the family about the shared album a few days ahead. Then shoot for faces and feeling, and let the guests cover the rest. Low light is hard, but it is also where some of the warmest pictures of the whole festival come from.