The city of Lindau is seen in Jakob Wagner's 'Nightscapes' photo series. (Jakob Wagner)

Photographer Jakob Wagner captures images of the world’s cities illuminated by lights of buildings, traffic lights and cars at night for his “Nightscapes” series.

Wagner, who started out as a graffiti artist, discovered his love for photography after he began using a camera to capture his artwork.

“During experimenting I found that with long exposures at night, things you cannot see with the naked eye, could be visualized,” Wagner told weather.com. “That fascinated me and I started my ‘Nightscapes’ series.”

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While he was a photo assistant, Wagner traveled the world, visiting cities such as San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Shanghai, Manila, Quito, Dubai, and Abu Dhabi. “I used every minute of my rare free time to take photographs for my personal projects” he said. “Foreign cultures and faraway countries have always excited me and traveling provides me with a lot of inspiration,” Wagner said.

There is a lot of preparation that goes into Wagner’s shoots. Before he visits a new city he does extensive web searches on the place, weather conditions, possible shooting locations and local tips.

“The most important aspect of my work is to match the right spot at the right time.” Wagner said. “Light and weather are the main actors in my sceneries. Sometimes I return many times to one spot, to get the shot with the right balance between weather and light.”

When he is planning an aerial shoot, he prefers to shoot at the end of dusk or at the start of dawn. “During this time of the day the combination of the existing natural light and artificial illumination works best for me. Furthermore at this time you are able to use long exposure times between two and 30 seconds, which creates stunning flow motions of water surfaces, clouds or traffic light streams.”

When it comes to cityscapes he likes shooting in the dark of night, which requires longer exposure times and sometimes requires post processing, Wagner stitches together layers of photos in Photoshop to create a final image.

View Wagner’s photos from his “Nightscapes” series in the slideshow above. To see more of his work visit his website.