Night Photography in Autumn – IELTS Reading Answers

Kasturika Samanta

12 min read

Updated On Jun 12, 2024

Reading Passage
Answers for Night Photography in Autumn Reading Passage with Location and Explanations
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As candidates prepare for IELTS, they should aim to complete IELTS Reading passages like ‘Night Photography in Autumn – IELTS Reading Answers’ in 20 minutes. In order to achieve this, practice is required to develop the capability of scanning the provided text rapidly, identifying key terms, and locating answers in a short period of time.

The IELTS General reading passage, ‘Night Photography in Autumn’, is part of Cambridge IELTS 18 General Reading Test 4 and consists of 13 questions which encompass various question types commonly found in IELTS Reading. To gain a comprehensive understanding of these question types, consider practising IELTS reading practice tests regularly.

The question types found in ‘Night Photography in Autumn’ are:

Matching Headings (Q. 1-7)
Sentence Completion (Q. 8-13)

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Reading Passage

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13 which are based on the Reading Passage below.

Night Photography in Autumn

A November in the northern hemisphere is not the most inspiring of months for the photographer. The days shorten appreciably as winter approaches and the last autumn leaves are blown free by high winds and frequent rain. Nature seems dormant, as many birds have long since flown to warmer climates, fungi break through the earth, and many animal species sleep until spring’s warm awakening. It would seem like a good time also to put the camera to bed and forget about photography until the first snowfall. Well, not quite. With the days being shorter and daylight less bright, November is an excellent month to turn your attention to what can be found in the long darkness from dusk to dawn. In the nocturnal hours a vast number of life forms still thrive, and provide a completely different set of subjects to those the daylight hours present.

B As the most noticeable object in the night sky, the moon is an obvious subject when making your initial attempts at night photography. The timing of an evening moonrise is important to know because, not only does it vary according to the time of year, but the moon always appears largest at this point, when it is closest to the horizon. To capture the moon at its brilliant best, you need a bit of luck too: a time when its brightest phase — a full moon — coincides with the ideal weather forecast of a cloudless night sky. The moon is not a direct light source such as the sun or the stars; instead it is reflecting the light of the sun hitting its surface. On such a night, a full moon will reflect only about ten percent of the sunlight, but that is still enough to illuminate buildings, trees, bridges and other landscape features.

C With today’s cameras, far greater detail can be rendered. Whole constellations consisting of thousands of points of starlight filling the frame and even galaxies such as our own Milky Way can be captured. This is a type of night photography for which few of us had suitable equipment a decade ago, but now it has become accessible to all photographers, thanks to the much improved, affordable technology.

However, photographers choosing to shoot the moon may be less concerned by this, as they tend to prefer to use telephoto lenses to magnify the size of the moon, particularly when it is low in the sky and can be shown in relation to a landmark or recognisable structure within the frame.

D Of course, the nocturnal world offers other subjects closer to the ground, some that are even familiar to us by day. As cities and towns spread further into our green spaces, some wild animals move further afield to escape our intrusions, while others adapt to their new urbanised surroundings.

In European cities, sightings of foxes at night are increasingly common, as they thrive thanks to the cover of darkness and a ready supply of residents’ waste bins, which they use as feeding stations. Deer and wild boar are larger mammals that have also adapted to the urban fringes in recent years, emerging from the cover of parks and nearby forests to forage in residential gardens by night.

E Such is the proliferation of urban wildlife that some photographers now specialise in documenting the nocturnal animals that have developed a taste for city nightlife. The improvement in camera technology that has made night sky images more accessible has also extended the creative repertoire of the wildlife photographer. It is now possible to photograph some wild species at night, or soon after dusk, without having to always resort to the use of specialist equipment.

More exciting still is how the techniques of astro-photography and the wildlife camera-trap have combined in recent years, to produce images of nocturnal animals against a background of a star-studded night sky. This marriage of two photographic genres has created an innovative style of night photography.

F If that all sounds a bit too complex and time-consuming, with too many variables to spoil the hoped-for result, then consider using the fading light of the night sky in the brief time after dusk in a more opportunistic manner. Dusk is the part of the nocturnal phase when the light of the sun is still visible, though the sun itself has disappeared completely. During the earliest phase of dusk there is enough ambient light remaining to enable features in our surroundings to be seen without the aid of artificial light sources such as flood lights or street lamps.

G While many of us shoot sunsets, the period of dusk also provides an opportunity to use the ambient light low in the sky as a backdrop to photographing foreground subjects in varying stages of illumination, or even as shadowy outlines against the fading sky. The variety of possible subjects includes ships at sea, flocks of low—flying birds, trees, windmills, skyscrapers and high bridges. These are all well known by day, but against a night sky at dusk they lack colour, so any compositional strength is determined by the graphic appeal of their distinct and recognisable shapes.

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Questions 1- 7

The text has seven sections, A—G.

Choose the correct heading for each section from the list of headings below.

Write the correct number, i—viii, in boxes 1—7 on your answer sheet.

List of Headings

i. How chance contributes to conditions being right

ii. Concern about the changing environment

iii. The process of photographing animals at night is getting easier

iv. How human developments are affecting wildlife

v. Photographing objects that can’t be seen in detail

vi. A season that may seem unsuitable for photographers

vii. No longer too expensive

viii. A less ambitious approach

1 Section A

2 Section B

3 Section C

4 Section D

5 Section E

6 Section F

7 Section G

Questions 8- 13

Complete the sentences below.

Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the text for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 8—13 on your answer sheet.

8 November is a time when ……………………… grow.

9 The apparent size of the moon depends on its position in relation to the …………………… .

10 Sunlight is reflected by the ……………………… of the moon.

11 When the night sky is clear, many objects in the ……………………… e.g., buildings, are visible.

12 With modern cameras, it is possible to photograph not only constellations but also ……………………….

13 Deer and wild boar may search for food in ……………………… in towns.

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