You don't see many night scenes in art, and for good reason. If you try painting on site you can't see the canvas or paints very well, and if you rely on a photo the camera loses so much - as here in this photo I took of King John's House in Romsey in the snow at the ridiculous time of 5:30am on a freezing winter's morning...
So the trick I use is to not just take the photo, but remember the scene, the colours, the light, and the feel. Then when I come to paint, I attempt to get the rough structure from the photo, and the rest from memory...
The dark tones can be the biggest issue, as the camera is poor at capturing them, and yet the viewer expects detail in them. You may not spot it in this finished view of Tenby harbour, but there is a whole lot of made up detail in the darkness of the bay and the dark shrubbery in the bottom right corner, that is only apparent when you see the original painting in good light. My source photo had just darkness in these areas. And that brings us nicely back to the problems of photographing - but in this case the finished painting, which is very good at reflecting any stray light straight into the lens!
For those interested - this painting used a lot of prussian blue - with a dash of white in the sky (to give it some opacity), with vandyke brown in the really dark places, with sap green as well in the dark vegetation, and just about everywhere else the brush went (including all the light areas) as its almost impossible to get it off the brush. I've also used yellow ochre (lit path), mauve (beach) and touches of a few other hues.
You can see more of my night paintings on my website at https://www.richardpaulart.co.uk with a set of four night scene cards available in the site shop.